Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s no doubt that Mary Sims loved her son. There is a lot of doubt, however, that  she was equipped to care for him. Her various infirmities had made life rather difficult for the two of them, especially after his father passed away. She had a job, but it didn't pay very well. This, combined with the fact that the two of them lived in the 10th least affordable city in the world and the fact that Mary Sims was too proud to ask for help from her extended family would lead one to believe the Simses might simply be cursed.

When Mary dies, however, no one says that anymore. It isn’t that they stop believing it - if anything, they think of it as confirmation - but it feels cheap, and it would destroy Jon if he heard it. His grandmother, especially, doesn’t want him finding out.

Ariel Sims is thoroughly aware of why her daughter-in-law and her son are dead, and she knows it’s her fault, though she’ll never tell Jon that. The murmurs of their acquaintances about curses are more true than anyone would like to think.

She’s watching Jon when the hospital calls to tell her. He can’t read yet, but that doesn’t stop him from dramatically reenacting all the picture books he has memorized, occasionally getting so excited he knocks the books off the shelves or causes the windows to open and shut. When the phone rings, though, he stops. She tries not to let on too much as the nurse on the other end of the phone tells her the news. Complications, they say, during an otherwise routine operation. 

“I lost my place,” Jon whines. He flips through the pages of the little board book he’s got levitating in front of him, then looks up at Ariel. “Is mummy allowed to leave hospital yet?”

Ariel hesitates. She can’t tell him. It’s so late at night; he’ll never sleep this way, and it would only break his heart. “Not yet,” she says. “She has to stay there for tonight.”

Jon grins, his eyes wide with excitement. “Does that mean I get to stay the night? Mummy said I might be able to!” His little freckles are glowing ever so slightly against his dark skin, like stars when a storm ends.

Ariel nods. “Yes, you may,” she says, as if there’s another option.

She does what she can. She gives Jon a bath, puts him to bed despite his protests, and stacks up all the books he’s left out. Normally, she would have him help her clean them up. Tonight, she wants him to have any little joy he can.

She waits until he’s asleep to hang the iron in the windows of the spare room he’s staying in. She makes sure it’s where he can’t reach it, but she can’t avoid accidentally burning herself a few times in the attempt. She got the amulets from a witch, when a band of them had travelled through Bournemouth. It’s not ideal, but it should do the job to protect him until she finds something less dangerous for the both of them.

She watches him sleep for a while before she goes. His freckles are glowing again, and he’s holding his little stuffed cat tight against his chest as he murmurs unintelligibly to himself.

When she finally returns to the living room, she lights a candle. Maybe she does it because she always does, or maybe it’s to cover up the uncertainty clogging the air. Either way, she finds the scent of bergamot and lilac comforting in all this.

She can only do so much, she knows. But she has to try to take care of him. She doubts anyone who might adopt Jon would be prepared to handle him, even if he weren’t one of the Fair Folk. 

Just like that, Ariel Sims got a second chance at being a mother.

This time, she hopes, she can do a better job of it.

Chapter Text

There are a lot of ways to cast a spell. Most witches do this with certain words or little incantations so the magic doesn’t get lost on its way, but Martin Blackwood isn’t one of those witches. As much as he likes a good incantation, he can never remember them. Besides, he’s always learned better with little songs.

He tries to focus on the tune he’s humming as he makes his mother’s medicine. The mundane doctors, bless them, can’t figure out what’s wrong with her, and she could die if she doesn’t receive some sort of help. Not that she acts like it.

“How long must you stay in my house with all that… Satanic junk?” she spits. She’s not Catholic, but since Martin has started treating her, she’s begun saying the Our Father whenever he enters or leaves, and she clutches a rosary the entire time he’s there. 

He ignores her, or tries to. It’s his job, he reminds himself, to use his craft to help people, even if they don’t appreciate it. He simply finishes the potion and holds out his hand, into which his mother places a single strand of her hair. He continues humming, rolling over the words of the song in his head:

“ Oh, it was Willie who undid the nine witch-knots 

Braided in amongst his lady’s locks,

And it was Willie who the leather shoe untied 

From the left foot of his wedded bride,

And it was Willie who split the silken thread 

Of spiders stretched all beneath his lady’s bed.”

It’s part of an old song, one of the Child ballads. It’s about breaking a curse, but any witch worth their salt knows curses and diseases are very nearly the same thing. The mixture begins to glow slightly, and he keeps humming, keeps telling the magic where to go. It’s almost ready, then he can leave.

He gives his mother the usual lecture: take it with a cup of tea, no more than a tablespoon, less if the pain isn’t bad, drink plenty of water. She returns it with the usual remarks: she wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t life and death, what he’s doing is corrupting him just like it did his father, she hopes he knows the consequences, etc. He pretends they don’t sting as he grabs his coat.

Saffron is waiting outside. His familiar has never been the most tactful around his mother, and Martin has made it his policy to ask them to wait outside when he went to her place. They usually spend their time as a cat when Martin is at home, but today they’ve decided to be a dog. Specifically, they’re a golden retriever. When Martin steps onto the front steps, Saffron jumps up, tail wagging. 

Finally! Can we go now? I hate this place. Martin can’t blame them. The whole house has gone rancid with resentment since his mum started living there.

“Yeah; we probably should if I’m going to make it to work on time and get you home,” Martin says. 

Saffron whines, taking full advantage of their literal puppy-dog eyes. Why can’t I go with you? Your tea leaves were awfully exciting this morning. I want to see what happens!

Martin sighs, scratching them behind the ears. “Fine. But you’re going to have to change into a mouse or something so I can sneak you into the Tube.”

Saffron happily obliges, taking the form of a snow-white mouse. Martin holds out his hand and they scurry up his arm and into his pocket, and he feels them wriggling around in there to get settled. Off we go!

The commute to work is pretty average. Martin isn’t really nervous sneaking Saffron onto the Tube anymore- he’d once seen a woman smuggle a nine-foot-long python on there in a handbag and no one had noticed, so why should he worry about a mouse? 

The Magnus Institute is as imposing as it’s ever been when he arrives. He’s just been transferred from Research to the Archive, and he hasn’t heard good things about his boss. His tea leaves this morning seem to have disagreed, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety building up in his stomach. He goes through the grand, a bit ostentatious foyer, through the library and down the steps into the Archives, taking a deep breath before he pushes open the door.

The smell is what hits him first. Dust, years of it, with hints of mildew and possibly stale cigarettes. It doesn’t look much better; there are shelves upon shelves of boxes and loose paper in various stages of decay. Some of the shelves are newer and in decent repair, like the ones in the library. Others appear to have been picked up off the side of the road for 50 pence somewhere, and some aren’t even shelves at all- papers are piled over everything from card tables to crates and swivel chairs from decades past, and it’s all set up like a labyrinth. In the midst of it all, Martin spies a clearing made near the wall for three desks. There’s a man at one of them, with dark hair cut into what vaguely resembles a mullet and a well-fitted black suit jacket over a Hawaiian shirt. He’s stacking papers, or pretending to. He doesn’t notice Martin at first, until he gets a bit closer.

Then, the man starts, looks up at him, and grins. “Finally! Other human life. I thought I was the only one down here.” He holds out his hand for Martin to shake. “I’m Tim. And you’re probably Martin, since I saw Sasha a minute ago.”

“Hi,” Martin stammers, shaking Tim’s hand with a weak grip that would make his grandfather turn in his grave. “Yeah, I’m Martin. Do you know--”

“Where our boss is?” Tim laughs. “No idea.”

At this, Saffron becomes restless in Martin’s pocket. I know where he is!

Martin loves his familiar dearly, but they have little-to-no impulse control. He tries to ignore them. They continue wiggling excitedly, pawing at the inside of his coat. Tim’s impeccably-groomed eyebrows furrow in confusion.

“Are you alright?”

“Yep!” Martin laughs. “I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be? I-” 

Come on! Saffron urges. He’s supposed to be super important! We have to go meet him!”

“Please excuse me for a second.” He ducks around the corner, behind the tallest bookshelf he can find. He helps Saffron out of his pocket, who promptly returns to their dog form and begins sprinting down a corridor of shelves. “Saffron!” he hisses, “Get back here!”

The golden retriever does no such thing, and Martin sprints after them. They round a corner, and Martin almost catches them. He doesn’t, and they weave through the maze of shelves until Martin can’t see them anymore. He tries to turn the same corner.

Instead, he runs literally headfirst into Jonathan Sims, the Head Archivist. 

Thankfully, neither of them hits the ground. It appears that the Head Archivist has dropped all the case files he was holding on the floor, however. 

Martin’s head is spinning, and it isn’t from the impact. If he wasn’t so embarrassed, in fact, he might have noticed the faint smell of bergamot at the back of his senses. As it stands, however, he doesn’t. He has no idea why he’s suddenly so dizzy.

Once his boss has finally picked up all the loose paper on the floor and stood up to his full height, Martin feels even worse. This guy is easily a head shorter than Martin, and so thin Martin is surprised he didn’t accidentally shatter him. His glasses have a small crack in them, and Martin isn’t sure whether or not that was his fault. His hair is pulled into something that might resemble a ponytail if it weren’t so disheveled, and there are several tea stains on his cardigan. His eyes, Martin can tell, would be a striking amber if they weren’t so dull from sleep deprivation.

“Martin?” he asks, incredulously. 

Martin makes a mental note to have a serious conversation with Saffron later about appropriate workplace behavior.

“Hi.”

Chapter Text

Jon hadn’t been looking forward to his first official day as Head Archivist before today. It wasn’t so much that he thought the day would be hectic; he’d done as much to prepare for this as he could. But Gertrude Robinson had left the Archive a complete disaster, and the amount of work that would have to be done to make the place make sense was entirely demoralizing. He’s only been at it for a day and he is already desperate to have the whole affair organized. 

He’s rather excited to meet his assistants, as Elias had told him they were some of the best the Institute had to offer for their purposes. He’s already met Tim and Sasha. Tim is a bit odd, but seems to be on top of things, and Sasha seems all-around quite nice. Martin, however, he has yet to meet.

At least, until Martin comes barreling down the corridor and directly into him.

He knows it’s Martin almost immediately. This is partly because of the fact that he’s already met his other two assistants, and partly because Martin came in yesterday to move all of his things from his desk in Research. Jon hadn’t actually been there when that had happened, but he had gotten an odd sensation when he’d walked past Martin’s desk. It was the same sensation one feels standing on the edge of a cliff or on top of a very tall building, the itching awareness that one push could set in motion something massively important. His grandmother hadn’t taught him much about his Fae heritage, but he knew enough to trust that he could recognize Martin by that sensation.

That same sensation is there now, so strong it’s making his ears ring. He’s not quite sure how to react, so he buys a bit of time by picking up all the case files he’s just dropped. “Martin?” he asks, as if he needs confirmation. He’s aware in an instant that this is, in fact, his assistant, who did, in fact, introduce himself by running headfirst at full speed into him. 

“Hi,” Martin laughs nervously, thankfully not questioning exactly how Jon knows who he is. “Er- Sorry,” he stammers, “about that. I just- er- well- have you seen a dog?”

A dog? What the hell? “Like, in general, or…?”

“No. In the Archives.”

Jon takes a deep breath, trying hard not to sound as on-edge as he is. “Why would there be a dog in the Archives?”

Martin shoves his hands in his pockets. “Oh, because… well…” He’s clearly fishing for a believable story that won’t get him into trouble. “I may have… brought them?”

“What?!” Jon can’t keep himself from raising his voice a bit. “Why?!”

“Well, I didn’t mean for them to get loose. They just- they wanted to come in with me, and it’s so cold out, and…” He starts looking around Jon and down the corridor.

Jon pinches the bridge of his nose and takes another very deep breath. “If you do not resolve this situation, you can be replaced.” He’d hate to fire Martin on his first day, but they have a job to do, and they can’t have dogs in the Archives.

“Oh. Yes, probably.” Martin still isn’t fully paying attention, but after a moment, Jon’s words seem to have sunk in. “ Oh! Right, yes, sorry- I’ll- sorry!” 

Martin sprints past Jon again, whistling for the dog. 

The next few weeks of Archival work see Jon developing a routine, as well as a deepening sense that something is wrong at the Magnus Institute. Things feel rather normal most of the time, except when he runs across a statement that won’t record on his computer. The feeling he gets when he reads them is just close enough to magic to be comforting, but just wrong enough to be deeply frightening. Even so, he finds himself arriving early and staying late. He has to get the statements organized, he has to find each and everyone and know where to put it.

He knows what his grandmother would have said about that, the old human adage about curiosity and cats. She would say it all the time, so much that Jon realized as he got older that it wasn’t about him. There absolutely had been something in her past that made her so adamant about not looking into things that weren’t yours. But she is dead now. She is dead and Jon is grown, and he has bigger things to worry about than his dead grandmother’s opinions.

Jon still isn’t sure how to feel about Martin though. That odd sensation he gets when they’re around each other hasn’t gone away at all. In fact, it’s only gotten worse. He chalks it up to the fact that he’s not used to being in charge of anyone, even though he’s well aware that isn’t what it is, and tries to avoid talking to Martin too much.

This is no easy feat, considering the man is nothing if not sociable. It’s always “how are you doing, Jon?” and “have you gotten enough sleep lately Jon? You look tired.” Jon is well aware that he doesn’t have the healthiest habits, but he doesn’t want to admit that to his assistant.

He’s actually avoiding Martin when he first notices something is well and truly off about him.

When he has to go get a certain box of files, he usually manages to take a route through the shelves that leaves him invisible to his assistants’ little gaggle of desks. It’s not efficient at all, but Jon finds it comforting that, while he can see them, they can’t see him. He’s on his way to get the newly-dedicated box of statements related to Jane Prentiss so he can add a file to it when he hears what might just be Martin singing.

It’s soft, but Jon recognizes the tune. He’d had a bit of an obsession with old folk songs when he was at university, and that obsession might have made its way into some of the songs he wrote for the band he was in. Martin sings softly, almost as if he knows Jon can hear him and doesn’t want him to:

“Willie stands at his stable door

And he’s combing a coal-black steed

And he’s thinking of fair Margaret’s love

And his heart begins to bleed.”

His voice isn’t extraordinary, but there’s something to the way he’s singing the words that makes Jon want to listen longer. It’s as if they’re coming from the deepest part of who he is, branching out in tendrils just as far as anyone can hear them.

But he doesn’t have time to listen, he reminds himself. And why would he want to? Martin’s just wasting time again, as usual. He finds the shelf in no time, heads back to his office, and promptly realizes he does need to talk to Martin.

He needs someone to take a look at Carlos Vittery’s apartment as part of the Prentiss investigation. Normally he would ask Tim or Sasha to take care of something like that, but they’re both otherwise occupied and Martin is the only one currently at the Archives.

He could send him an email, he supposes, though even he can’t quite justify emailing someone whose desk is approximately four metres away from his own. So he gets up and goes to talk to him.

When he gets to Martin’s desk, the ginger is muttering to himself. Jon can’t quite make any of it out, but Martin isn’t speaking with the same tone as someone who knows they’re talking to themself. Rather, his tone is as if he were talking to someone else- but there’s no one else in the Archive except Jon.

No matter. At least he’s not letting dogs in the Archives this time.

When Jon greets him, Martin jumps as if he’s suddenly been mugged.

“Oh! Hi, Jon.” Martin laughs nervously once he calms down. “You startled me; what can I do for you?”

That feeling snakes its way through Jon’s veins again. “I need you to investigate Carlos Vittery’s apartment.” He gives Martin a slip with the address written on it and tries to keep his composure. “Nothing too involved. Just take a look around and document what you see. We haven’t been able to get ahold of the landlord, but so long as you’re careful it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”
“Yeah, sure- of course. Yeah, I can do that.” Martin is fidgeting rather furiously now. 

Jon isn’t quite sure what to do with that, so he simply replies, “Good,” and walks away.

Before he gets quite through his office door, though, he hears Martin start singing again:

“He’s rode over the high, high hill

Down the dewy glen

And the rushing in the Clyde Water

Would’ve feared 500 men.

‘Rolling Clyde, you roar so loud

Your streams are wondrous strong

Make me a wreck as I come back

But spare me as I’m going’”

That’s when Jon remembers.

When he was small, his grandmother had taken him to see a friend of hers who specialized in curse-breaking. He’d gotten a similar feeling around them, though it had probably dulled as he’d got older. And he remembers what it had sounded like when they’d started their incantations to work at the magic under Jon’s skin.

He looks back at Martin, the suspicion creeping halfway into his mind, and shakes his head as if it’s an Etch-a-Sketch. Whatever Martin is or isn’t, that is none of his business.

Chapter Text

It’s such a shame about Jane, remarks Saffron as they and Martin climb the stoop in front of Carlos Vittery’s apartment. 

“I try not to think too much about it,” Martin replies, under his breath. It’s true. When Jane was first… infected, Martin had never felt so lost. They’d both tried everything- curse-breaking spells, uncrossing chants, healing magic. The whole coven had. But after a while, Jane went missing, and when she turned up again, all of them were so distressed they’d disbanded and the coven mother had moved to France. Jane had made it very clear that she didn’t want help anymore.

Saffron can feel Martin’s distress, and they scurry out of his pocket and onto his shoulder, nuzzling his chin. You did everything you could. You did everything she would let you do.

Martin sighs. “You’re right.”

Are you sure you need to be here, though? Saffron asks. Your tea leaves this morning…

“They were bad. I know. But you know what happened last time I didn’t give a case its due diligence. It can’t be much worse than that, right?” It’s a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. Saffron’s abilities as a familiar give them just enough of a glimpse into the most likely futures that they can sometimes warn Martin when life is about to get particularly rough.

I haven’t seen much, Saffron replies, reluctantly. But Jane’s energy is a lot stronger than it should be if she hasn’t been here in a while.

Martin knows that, too. He can feel it just above his skin: this swarming, rolling tide of disease that crawls like insect legs and breeds like every germ imaginable, invading and making its home in everything he is or once was. It hasn’t been this strong since she showed up to announce her new affiliations to their coven. Martin has to use all his power not to turn tail and run. He has to investigate this place, but if Jane is here as he suspects, even magic can’t protect him. 

Slowly, breathlessly, he places a hand on the doorknob, turns it. It’s locked. Not surprising. He tries the buzzers then, but no one answers. He could unlock the door here, but he doesn’t want to be spotted by someone in the building, so he takes a look around the building and comes to a small basement window in the alley.

“This should do,” he mutters to himself, and continues toward it.

Suddenly, Saffron squeaks in alarm. Martin!

Martin looks down to see a very plump, white worm racing toward him. He curses and stomps on it, and the disgustingly familiar pop of the thing bursting echoes through the quiet alley. Now he’s even less sure of his safety, if that’s possible.

Aside from the encounter with the worm and the suffocatingly off feeling of the place, Martin’s first visit to Boothby Road is rather normal, even a bit productive. He doesn’t have to use magic to get in or to get anyone to tell him what he wants to know, and he starts to head home, his mind full of what he’s learned.

The closer he gets to his own flat, though, the more a creeping anxiety comes over him that he just doesn’t know enough. He’d spent barely any time in the basement, and he hadn’t seen much of it since it was so dark. And the basement had stretched under the entire building. Jon would think he was stupid for not checking. 

By the time he’s made up his mind to go back, he and Saffron have already made it back home. Saffron takes their usual form as a cat, their snowy fur turning a fulgent gold and brown stripes arching across their back. Martin puts the kettle on as usual, but gets out one mug instead of two. Normally, he and Saffron would have tea at about this time (just because they look like a cat doesn’t mean they require a cat’s diet). He hopes Saffron knows what he’s on about and won’t make him explain. 

No such luck. 

Where are you going? Saffron asks when Martin places their tea on the coffee table and grabs his coat. 

“I think there’s something I missed at Boothby Road.”

Saffron flicks their tail when they hear this, arching their back in warning. Don’t do that. It’s a terrible idea. 

“I won’t get arrested or anything,” Martin jokes, trying to shake off the gut feeling that Saffron is right.

I know that, Saffron replies. But if you were arrested, it wouldn’t be much worse than if you went back to Boothby Road.

“I have to do my job, Saffron,” Martin sighs. “And you know Jon will give me hell if I come back without checking everything--”

Saffron sits back on their haunches, their tail lying down but still twitching in agitation. I can’t choose for you, but I also can’t promise not to say I told you so.

When Martin arrives, Saffron’s warning still rings clear in his mind. The streets are dark, and the fog typical of London is making things especially spooky. Martin cringes a bit at the thought- he knows Jon hates it when people use that word. And he really shouldn’t be so scared; after all, one of the scariest things lurking in this darkness is him. Witches are the stuff of children’s nightmares, the powerful villains in fairy tales. At least, that’s what he tells himself as he lowers himself into the basement again.

It takes him a bit longer than normal to get a witch-lantern going. Normally, Saffron does it, but they had made it pretty clear they didn’t want to come with Martin. Maybe, he thinks, that’s why the writhing terror he feels has gotten worse. 

The light isn’t helping. It’s giving off a pale green glow, only dimly illuminating the few feet in front of him. His footsteps are the only sound he hears for a while, though, and he starts to wonder whether the greatest danger in this basement might just be getting caught. He sings a short spell out into the basement that might help conceal him:

“But Carterhaugh is not your own;

Roses there are many,

And I’ll come and go all as I please

And not ask leave of any.”

The melody echoes off the walls for a moment, and everything is silent.

At least, until Martin hears the humming.

It’s like a thousand wasps buzzing in tune, and the way the sound bounces off the walls makes Martin unsure whether it’s five of them or a thousand. Not that it matters. They’re all repeating the tune he just sang out. His skin is crawling, and even if he hasn’t consciously realized what’s going on, he’s never been more certain at the very centre of his being.

He desperately doesn’t want to follow the sound. But he’s committed to investigating at this point, and it’s his job to do so. He slowly makes his way around the room, trying to get as much light out of the glowing ball in his palm as possible. He comes back around to the corner to the left of where he entered through the window, and there’s a woman there.

She’s got black hair, hanging down filthy from her scalp, and when she coughs into the handkerchief, Martin recognizes her immediately. And, like an idiot, he calls out to her.

“Jane?”

She snaps her head around, and Martin almost vomits. Whatever this thing is that used to be Jane Prentiss, whatever has infested one of his dearest old friends, is staring right into him. She- no, it, gives him what could be recognized as a smile if it had a recognizable mouth.

Then, the worms start pouring from their nest.

Chapter Text

Jon doesn’t expect the anxiety he feels around Martin to continue once Martin stops coming to work. He has more or less accepted, in the past few days, that the reason he always feels he was being watched was the same reason he felt like the floor was falling out from under him whenever Martin was around. Unfortunately, he soon realizes, this conclusion was stunningly incorrect. 

Rather than that odd, quaking feeling, though, he feels a certain confusion. It’s like when he had first begun living with his grandmother after his mother had died. In those first few weeks, he’d often opened his eyes, certain he was home, only to see the iron talismans in the windows reminding him he was not. With Martin in the Archives, Jon felt the terror of his own destiny. Without him, he feels he’s missed a memo somewhere. 

But he can’t let that get to him. Absolutely not. He has work to do, and he can’t spend all day reading over the text from his assistant about a parasite. 

So Jon continues. He reads through statements, puts what he can in a computer and commits the rest to tape while trying his hardest not to believe them. Some nights, he’s so focused on getting work done that he simply doesn’t leave. This isn’t too much of a problem, though. Being half-Fae means he needs relatively little sleep compared to the other staff, and can forego it entirely so long as he can get some saffron or honey. 

He knows he can only do that for so long, however. Near the seventh day of Martin’s absence from work, (though Jon isn’t sure why he’s measuring things that way,) he starts falling asleep in the middle of tasks. This is a concern, because he can’t afford for his coworkers to walk in while he’s asleep and see his freckles glowing or the books floating because he got carried away in a dream. He’s already got a curse, and he really doesn’t want to add whatever the Fae Courts would do to him if they found out he’d been so careless. Every time he tries to go home and rest, though, he feels compelled to go back. His rest is never easy, when he finally does sleep. He dreams, he knows, of some of the statements, though he can never remember them upon waking. At this juncture, it seems to Jon that he won’t be getting much rest as Head Archivist.

On one particularly rough day, thirteen days after Martin’s initial absence, Jon has taken to simply organizing statements he wants to go through later. He’s having a hard time resisting the temptation to pick one up and read it, but he knows he doesn’t have the energy to combat the swelling fear it would bring. He could barely understand Sasha this morning when she’d asked him if he wanted a cup of tea. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell he could process a statement. 

He’s sitting on the floor of his office, stacking statements in several different piles, when the old door scrapes its way open. He nearly jumps out of his own skin at the sound.

It’s Elias, looking just as simultaneously haggard and put-together as always. Jon tries to avoid eye contact as he stands and climbs over the stacks of papers. 

“Hello, Jon. May I have a word with you?”

This can’t be good. “Of course,” Jon nods, and sits at his desk. He is suddenly very, very awake. Elias pushes the door closed and steps over the stacks of papers around him carefully, with a predatorial grace that makes Jon feel like a gazelle on the open savannah. When he sits, he sits up straight as a crucifix. 

“I would like to ask you something rather… personal, if I may.” What is this? The man sitting across from him is unreadable, his ancient eyes and firmly set lips betraying nothing. Jon doesn’t want to answer whatever he’s about to be asked, but he wants to know what it is. In the end, it’s that insatiable curiosity of his that wins.

“What is it?”

“It seems you’re rather busy, so I won’t beat around the bush.” Elias folds his hands on the edge of Jon’s desk, his spider-like fingers overlapping as he draws in a breath and his terrible eyes scan his surroundings. “What do you know about your Fae heritage?”

Jon’s stomach drops, somehow further than it already has. “My what?” If Elias knows, who else does? How does Elias know? 

“There’s no need to be coy with me, Jon; just answer the question whenever you’re ready.” Elias sits back in the chair. “I’m simply here to offer you some… assistance, as it were.”

Jon shakes his head, blinks twice. He looks around the room, though he knows there’s no one else there. “Assistance?” He stammers, trying hard to keep his composure despite the lump rising in his throat. “I can’t- I don’t know--”

Elias sighs. “Do take a deep breath, Jon. We haven’t the time for you to work yourself into this state, and besides, you’ve nothing to fear. You’re not the only one of the Hidden Folk at this Institute.”

Jon is taken thoroughly aback, though he’s much less confused now. “Are you saying you’re Fae?”

Elias nods, a little smirk playing at the corner of his lips. “Although I’d expect you to have figured that out by now.” He tilts his head back, and ever so slightly to the side. He’s studying Jon, searching his face and body like a curious researcher studying an eons-old ritual object. “I assume, then, that the answer to my question is ‘not a great deal.’” 

Jon doesn’t respond. He could very well answer, and answer with everything he does know about the other Fae, but he’s still not sure how to handle this situation. Normally, he can tell if someone is lying to him. It’s one of the perks of his magical genes, but it doesn’t seem to be working on Elias. Nothing is. Everything behind those eyes, those God-awful things with far too much of a glint to them, is pitch-black to him. 

Elias purses his lips. “I’ve guessed correctly, it seems. So I take it you’re unaware of the difficulty of integrating into Fae culture as the descendant of a human mother?” 

Jon is, in fact, aware of that. His grandmother had tried to take him to Avalon, the hidden isle of the Fae, before she passed. Unfortunately, her banishment and his status as half-mortal had meant they hadn’t made it past the first gate. “I do know about that, yes,” Jon replies quietly. 

Elias stands. “I’d like to show you something.” He closes his eyes, and Jon watches as thousands of tiny symbols begin to glow from the tips of Elias’s fingers and up toward his body. “This is my entire genealogy, tracing all the way back to the first Fae.” Jon pores over what he can see of the incandescent tattoos, entranced by the names listed on Elias’s skin that he shouldn’t be able to read. “Most Fae children,” Elias continues, “Develop these over time, as tales of their families are told to them by their fellows. It is the marker of one’s very identity, and the way most Fae find each other in more mundane areas like London.” He opens his eyes, and Jon realizes with a start that he’s leaned all the way across the desk to get a better look. “You have none, and that isn’t all you’re missing.” Elias crosses over to Jon, who tries to move backward in his chair. “Fortunately, as one who still has his connection to our… homeland, as it were, I can help you.”

“How?” Jon is wary, but can’t resist the idea of learning more about his family. Who knows; perhaps the other Fae will know how to rid him of his curse as well. His mind spins as he imagines a life without having to carry sachets of salt and nails, without cleaning up after the burns he gets when they spill. 

 “Cases such as yours are not unprecedented, but they are extremely rare. Most often, half-Fae grow up with no knowledge of who they truly are. On some occasions, however, they have been fully integrated into Fae society.”

“How? How do they do that?” Jon is hanging on Elias’s every word, despite trusting none of it. 

“It’s rather simple,” Elias replies passively. “By marriage.”

Jon freezes. Every cell in his body is screaming, trying to say no, but he can’t get the words out. There is something so terribly wrong here; he knows enough to trust his intuition on that. Elias leans in close, so close Jon can feel his breath on his neck. “You’re fascinating, Jon. Think of what we could offer each other.”

Jon stares into Elias’s eyes like a soldier into the barrel of an enemy gun. “Elias, I-” he splutters, trying to buy himself time, to say anything that might get this man away from him. 

But before he can say anything, Martin bursts in with a peach can, filled with what looks like a handful of writhing, white worms.

Chapter Text

Martin isn’t sure what’s going on anymore. He’s so rattled from the events of the past two weeks and so near passing out from hunger and sleep deprivation that he can’t see straight, and when he bursts into Jon’s office with a can of worms, he barely registers exactly how insane that is. He doesn’t even notice Elias at first, though he’s standing quite close to Jon. He stumbles over to the desk, tripping over the stacks of what he’s pretty sure are statements scattered about the floor. He can feel his vision going dark, but he has to tell Jon what’s going on somehow. Jon’s talking to him, but it sounds like he’s underwater. His whole body is aching, screaming for food or water or rest, but there’s no time.

Martin grips the edge of the desk to try and stay upright. God, if Saffron were here to see this… Saffron. Oh, gods. Where are they? No. They’ll find him. They always do. He just has to tell Jon what’s going on. He tries to speak, but no dice. Martin’s knuckles turn white and he gives up on words, throwing the can of worms down onto Jon’s desk.

That’s all his body can handle, apparently, because shortly after he does that, his legs buckle underneath him.

When Martin comes to, he’s on the floor in the entrance to the Archives. It’s the most open space in the whole building.

Or it would be, at least, if he weren’t surrounded by Jon, Sasha, and Tim, all at very close quarters despite themselves. 

“Martin, are you alright?” It’s Jon, of all people, who asks this. Martin tries to sit up, to say yes, but the room starts spinning again. He can barely croak out something he wishes could mean yes, but should probably be taken as a no. Gods, he feels awful. 

“It’s okay, Martin,” Sasha says, catching him as he starts to fall back down. “We’ve got you. And Tim got the worms.”

The worms. Oh, bollocks, the worms! All of Martin’s muscles tense at once, causing him to jerk away from Sasha’s grip. Where are they? He can’t feel any burrowing into him, but he’s learnt from the first few times that he can never be sure. The panic that fills him makes him want to run or cry out, but his body won’t move and his mouth can’t scream for how dry it is. 

Jon places a hand on Martin’s shoulder as Tim and Sasha help him sit up fully. “They are… contained, Martin. You’re safe,” he says, his tone just as formal and restrained as it’s ever been despite the tremor of worry behind it. Martin nods, takes a deep breath. Good. He lets the soft tone of Jon’s voice quiet his fear for a moment.  

Tim hands him a paper cup of something, and Martin takes it with violently quivering hands. He nearly spills some on himself, but Jon puts his hand on the cup to steady it just in time. 

“Drink it slowly,” Tim says. “If you chug it, you’ll just vomit, and you won’t be in any better shape than you started.” 

Martin obliges, sipping from the flimsy thing with Jon’s hand ensuring he doesn’t accidentally throw it across the room. It’s watered-down juice, or maybe very weak tea, but it’s the best thing Martin has tasted in days. That could be, he realizes, because it’s the first thing he’s tasted in days. 

The others give Martin a bit to finish before helping him move to a chair. He’s still dizzy when he stands, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it was before, and while he still aches, it isn’t nearly as agonizing as it had been. 

He takes a few deep breaths, then speaks. “How long was I out for?” Gods, it feels good to be able to talk again.

“Not long,” Sasha responds. “About two minutes. We moved you out here so you could have some more space and it would be… easier if we had to call an ambulance.”

“We probably ought to call one anyway,” Jon says. “Two minutes is distinctly longer than average for a fainting spell.”

“No,” Martin replies, fighting down the nausea slowly rising in his throat. “I’ll be fine.” He will, he knows. His blood sugar is coming back up, and he’s pretty sure he can stand if he tries. It’ll take a bit longer for him to regain his ability to do any spellwork, but once Saffron finds him, things will get exponentially better. What matters now is that he tells Jon what’s just happened. He drags himself up with arms made of lead until he’s standing. Tim tries to tell him to sit down, but Martin shakes his head. He looks Jon dead in the eyes. “I want to make a statement.”

Martin tells Jon almost everything, as near to the truth as he can without telling the man he’s a witch. He leaves out the little things: the witch’s lantern, his argument with Saffron, and the fact that he used to know Jane. As far as he figures, none of it would be helpful, and he’d rather not reveal that he’d directly opposed his clairvoyant familiar just to impress his boss. 

Saffron had been right, though. He wishes he hadn’t gone back, wishes he’d just let Jon scold him for twenty minutes rather than huddling on the sofa, half-starved and exhausted from holding up his magical barricade for two weeks. Maybe that’s why they were gone when he got back, he thinks. He’s heard of familiars abandoning their witches before. Maybe they wanted to work with someone who’d actually listen to them.

Or maybe, says the kinder part of him, they knew you’d go no matter what. 

That thought isn’t exactly comforting, but he’ll take it.

He gives his statement, feeling the whole time as if the words are being pulled out of him like a violent spirit. Though the lies he tells are small, they’re nonetheless more difficult to get out, and he struggles against the urge to tell everything exactly as it happened. Jon must know, he thinks; he must not believe any of it.

When he finishes, Jon sighs. “Statement ends.” He thinks for a moment, and Martin is gripped with terror. If Jon doesn’t believe him and Jane follows Martin to the Archives…. “You’re sure about all this, Martin?” Jon’s gaze bores a tunnel right through the centres of Martin’s pupils.

Martin blinks and looks away. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you about something like this, Jon. I….” He isn’t sure what he can say. “I like my job,” he finally spits out. “Most of the time.”

“Very well,” Jon replies. “In that case, there’s a room in the Archives I use to sleep when working late. I suggest you stay there for now.”

Martin wasn’t expecting that. He’s thrown so thoroughly off-balance by that offer that he’s convinced he may faint again, even if a very small part of him seems to know this is how it’s supposed to be. Jon continues, assuring him the Archives will be safe from any potential infestation, but Martin isn’t listening very closely. His sixth sense, or maybe even his seventh, is shouting at him that this is how it all begins. This is it! his intuition cries. This is the truth you’re meant to get at! Remember it! Hold it close! This is everything!

“Okay… Thanks. To be honest, I didn’t expect you to… take it seriously.”

“You say you lost your phone two weeks ago?” Jon doesn’t seem fazed. Then again, he never does. Maybe Martin is overreacting, but if he doesn’t know what he’s reacting to, how can he tell?

“Thereabouts,” he replies, “when I went back to the basement.”

“Well, in that time I have received several text messages from your phone, saying you were ill with stomach problems.” That sends chills up Martin’s spine. Of course. That’s why no one had come looking for him. It answered a question he hadn’t thought to ask, and he’s almost glad he’s only thought of it now. The paranoia he would have been filled with, the fear of being left helpless and alone while they all knew he was hurting and in danger….  “The last one” Jon continues, breaking Martin’s inner monologue, “said that you thought it ‘might be a parasite’, though my calls trying to follow up were never answered. So, if this does involve Jane Prentiss, then I take it deadly seri--”

Jon’s phone buzzes. He stops, checks it.

“What?”

“I’ve just received another text message.”

Martin sneaks a glance at the screen. It’s from his phone.

It's from Jane. 

It's never over, not that quickly.

Not for Martin Blackwood.

Chapter Text

After the events of the past week, Jon’s nerves are shot. He had figured this would happen when he first offered Martin a place to stay. Not only is he now constantly aware that there’s someone, some thing out there that wants him dead; he now has to deal with the snowstorm of emotion he feels around his assistant on a near-constant basis. This is all only compounded by the fact that Martin is so high-strung that Jon can feel his stress all the way from his office. 

But he continues to do his job. It isn’t because it makes him feel better; it doesn’t. It never has. It just gives him something to do other than sit on his hands and pray that a torrent of worms doesn’t come barreling through the Institute doors in five minutes. That’s all he needs it to do, he supposes.

It’s approximately three in the morning one night when he stops being able to hide from it all. He’s read four statements; none of them will record on his computer. It’s too much to have done in one night. He knows that, but he feels he can’t stop reading. Statement after statement passes, each worse than the last. Every shadow is a demon watching him, every gust from the vents the breath of a murderer down his neck, and if Jon doesn’t see another living soul the paranoia will eat him alive. The lights are on in his office, but his heart is racing as if he were in pitch darkness.

It’s this deep, primal fear that wins in the end. He can’t bring himself to go home, but he can’t stay where he is. He’s fully aware of how odd this is, how inappropriate it is. But in this moment, his heart is beating too quickly and his head is spinning too much for him to care. He’s filled with a drive to safety, like when he’d get up to find his grandmother after a nightmare when he was small.

So when he cracks the door to Document Storage, he prays Martin doesn’t wake up. He slides his hand through the crack in the door, feeling for the energy of the room. When he draws it out again, he feels something like feathers brushing across his skin. It’s an old Fae trick his grandmother taught him so he could tell whether he could be observed doing magic in a place. From it, Jon can tell Martin’s still asleep, and very soundly too. He slips through the door, quick as a cat out of the cold.

It’s so dark he can’t see his hand in front of him. He takes a breath, willing his freckles to glow. The low, green light they provide is just enough for him to see by, and it doesn’t take long for them to flicker out into the blackened room. His hands shake, and the light is as hesitant as its bearer. 

Martin doesn’t stir, though. Jon looks around, surveying the area. There aren’t a lot of places to hide if Martin wakes, and Jon never got the hang of turning invisible. There is, however, just enough space under the cot Martin is sleeping on for Jon’s thin frame to lie down. It’s absurd, he knows, and if Martin took more than about five seconds to look around he’d find him. But he has a watch on, and he hasn’t seen Martin awake before eight a.m. since he moved into the Archives. He can leave before Martin ever wakes. He just needs to be somewhere with someone who won’t hurt him.

But when Jon tries to curl up beneath the cot, he notices there’s already something there. It’s small and furry, about the size of a small rat or a large mouse. It wakes, turning to look at him with glowing golden eyes, and Jon has to swallow a yelp. He half-expects the thing to run away, but it doesn’t. It just sits there, staring at him, unblinking. He could swear that the thing is smiling at him.

It tilts its head, then scurries out from under the cot. It leaps up to where Martin is sleeping and begins nudging him. Martin stirs.

Jon is paralyzed. He could stay under the cot and pray Martin doesn’t get up and notice him, or he could make a run for the door and hope that doesn’t wake him. Either way, Jon has a fraction of a second to decide.

He doesn’t decide in time. 

He hears Martin groan, watches the cot shift above him as he sits up. 

“Saffron?” Martin asks, his voice groggy. Who the hell is Saffron? “Thank the gods! How long did it take you to find me? Where have you been?” Martin is talking to the little rat thing. Of course he is. He’s already brought a dog into the Archives; this really shouldn’t come as a surprise to Jon. But he’s talking to it as if it’s responding. “Of course I couldn’t go back home! Jane knows where I live now!” Martin continues. “No, Jon doesn’t know.” Jon has to bite his tongue. What doesn’t he know? What could Martin be hiding from him? “What about him? He’s where? ”

Damn it. 

“You’re joking. No. Actually, you know what? I will look.”

This is not happening. Jon was not so stupid as to think he could come into what is effectively his subordinate’s bedroom and have that go well. He’s dreaming. That’s it. That would explain the rat thing, that would explain why Martin was talking to it. That doesn’t stop him from tensing up, though. He lies there, stiff as a board, praying not to see Martin’s feet swing over the side of the cot--

--and they don’t. He watches the fabric above him sink toward him as Martin lies back down. Jon breathes a sigh of relief.

“I’m not that gullible, Saf,” Martin laughs. He pauses for a moment after that, as if to think or to listen. “I kind of thought you’d just left, you know,” Martin muses, yawning. “I’d heard of that happening before, to really stubborn witches. Probably wasn’t fair of me to assume that, though.” 

Wait. Witches?

“You’re right. Thanks for coming back, Saffron.”

Martin can’t be a witch. He’s nowhere near competent enough to do magic . But if he were… no. That… thing, whatever it is, is probably just a pet. One that shouldn’t be in the Archive, but Jon can hardly begrudge Martin that small comfort after all the trauma he’s just experienced.

He can’t deny what he saw, though. Its eyes had glowed, that odd gold Jon has seen on so many familiars before. Perhaps, finally, there’s an explanation for that feeling he gets around Martin. Perhaps now that awful and rapturous dread has a reasonable cause, and Jon can put it out of his mind. 

He lays there, on the cold concrete floor, listening to Martin’s breathing as it slows. He watches the fabric of the cot shift above him as Martin turns over in his sleep, and when Jon is sure he won’t wake, he crawls out of the room just as quickly as he entered it.

Jon avoids Martin the next morning, even more than usual. He tries to do so, at least, but the man seems to insist upon talking to him. It’s all professional, of course, but Jon is having a very difficult time keeping his mouth shut about the night’s revelations. Therefore, he finds every interaction he has with Martin supremely frustrating.

This is the case, at least, until Martin offers to make them both dinner.

They’re sitting in the break room when it happens. Tim and Sasha, per their custom on Tuesdays, have gone out to a café leaving Jon and Martin to sit in opposite chairs at the only card table in the room and pretend not to see each other.

They do their usual dance. Jon makes sure to stay out of arm’s reach while making his tea in the microwave. Martin tries awkwardly to make conversation while he brews his own using the kettle, giving up after a few attempts.

It seems that way, at least. Martin seems more agitated than usual, stirring his tea an unnecessary amount and fidgeting with the carrot sticks he’d bought yesterday because Tim kept stealing his chips. Jon finds this fidgeting unusual, but doesn’t say anything. He stares intently at the digestive biscuits on his own napkin, desperate to be out of the situation but too curious not to stay. Has he figured out I was there?

Martin lifts his head. “Jon?”

“Yesh?” Jon’s head pops up, a response spilling from his mouth along with several biscuit crumbs. He quickly covers his mouth with another napkin, both to cover the deep blush and the crumbs now stuck in his stubble. Damn it. Now he knows something’s off.

“Are you going to be working nights all week? Because, well…” 

Jon swallows his biscuit. “Well…?”

“I was thinking about, like, properly cooking something tonight? Like, I’m tired of just eating microwaved soup all the time, and I was wondering if you wanted- because I know you don’t usually eat much and that can’t be good for you-”

“Are you asking to cook me dinner, Martin?”

Martin’s ears go red, and the usually large man seems to shrink in his seat. “I mean, if that’s okay, I don’t want to be inappropriate or anything--”

“No.” Jon finds himself interjecting. “It’s, uh…” he sighs, shifts in his seat. “That would be nice,” he finds himself choking out eventually.

“Right.” Martin’s face lifts, in that awkward but joyful way it does on the rare occasion Jon doesn’t have to get onto him for something. “How do you feel about lasagne?”

“That sounds fine.”

“Excellent. I’ll just, um… head to Tesco then. Once Tim and Sasha head out.”

The two finish their lunches in complete silence. Jon is furious with himself. His grandmother had always told him not to accept gifts, especially not from… because... good Lord. What has he done?

Chapter Text

Martin doesn’t mean to tell Tim about what happened during the lunch break. In fact, he intends not to do so at all. One would think, too, that someone with so many secrets would be halfway decent at keeping this one.

No such luck, unfortunately. When Tim and Sasha return to their desks, the first thing Tim asks is why Martin is blushing.

“I’m not blushing,” Martin replies, feeling his ears grow hotter with the lie. 

Tim chuckles at this. “Sasha, come on. He’s totally blushing. Back me up here.”

Sasha moves her head from side to side in an exaggerated caricature of genuine consideration. “Gee, Tim, I can’t tell. His ears are bright red, but maybe it just got really cold down here and only just warmed up when we walked in.”

“Ah, so that’s why his ears are so red. My mistake.” Tim is trying very hard not to look like he’s laughing, as is Sasha. They’re both doing a terrible job. “For real, though, Martin, what’s going on?”

“It’s nothing,” Martin insists. If they thought he was nervous before, he’s not making it any better.

“Methinks the lad doth protest too much,” Sasha smirks.

There’s no way he’s getting out of this. “Fine,” he snaps. “I’m making dinner for me and Jon tonight because I’m sick of eating canned soup and I feel like I owe him for letting me stay here. Happy?”

Sasha seems a bit taken aback, but satisfied, and Tim just seems surprised Martin was able to snap like that. Nobody seems sure what to say, so they all return to what they had been doing before the fateful lunch break.

Truth be told, Martin does feel bad for getting angry with them. Honestly, he hasn’t felt like himself since the incident at his apartment. And he doesn’t understand why he hasn’t been able to stop thinking of things to do for Jon, either.

It had started with the tea. He’d made Jon a cup the day he “moved in” as a way of saying thank you, but it really hadn’t felt like enough. That made sense; Jon had done him a pretty big kindness by just inviting him to live in the Archives, something that wasn’t strictly allowed. But the more time has passed, he’s been almost obsessed with finding something to pay Jon back. It’s giving him stress dreams, almost replacing his nightmares about Prentiss. It’s… odd, and he’d ask Saffron about it if he didn’t feel bad for not taking their advice last time.

He’s still thinking about it as he walks to Tesco. The wind is biting, and Saffron is nestled deep in Martin’s coat pocket.

Something’s wrong, Saffron whispers. Your whole energy is off.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Martin mutters, trying to ignore the same nausea that’s plagued him for days.

I know you’ve been through the wringer with Jane, they reply. But even the first time she… well, it wasn’t this bad the first time. I think it’s something from the outside.

Martin knows what that means. “And who do you think is hexing me?”

I don’t think it’s a hex. I think it’s to do with Jon.

Martin stops dead on the pavement, forgetting his surroundings. “What is your obsession with Jon?!” 

First, Saffron sends him on a wild goose chase specifically to force him to run into Jon. Then, they claim Jon is hiding under his bed. Now, they’re claiming Jon’s done something to him. Martin has never known his familiar to hate anyone, but that’s what it seems is happening. 

I don’t have an obsession, Saffron retorts. I just have the same thing you do, which is the ability to recognize which energies come from the same source. 

Martin sighs. Finally noticing the odd glances he’s getting from passers-by, he starts walking again. “Fine. What do you think Jon, my thoroughly mundane boss, is doing to me with magic?”

I don’t know, Saffron says. All I can tell is he isn’t what he looks like. He’s something else.

“I can’t really do anything about ‘something else,’ can I?” Martin asks, almost with a sigh. He isn’t irritated anymore; he’s just tired.  He can’t deny that he just wants to have a normal few days, and he also can’t deny that that desire may be clouding his judgement. He wants practical solutions, he wants to be able to do something to control what happens to him. 

All I can say is you may want to do some digging. Jon’s important for you later. Maybe this is part of the reason why.

It is, as it turns out, very difficult to make a lasagne in a break room with no oven. Martin manages, though, jury-rigging the kettle to boil the pasta and melting all the cheese in the microwave. The end product will by no means be delicious, but it will be… not canned. Not frozen. Except the garlic bread, anyway. He would use magic to fix it, but he’s had enough of doing magic on food for a while. It also just seems… disingenuous somehow. He even goes so far as to ask Saffron to hide in document storage so they don’t try to fix it for him.

He is fully aware of the comedy of the situation when he and Jon sit down to eat. They alternate between using plastic forks and spoons to scoop out portions of the pasta, eating it off the tiny dessert plates in the cupboard. 

“Thank you for doing this, Martin,” Jon says between bites of severely undercooked pasta. “It’s, er….”

“It’s okay,” Martin laughs, cutting him off. “You can say it’s bad.”

“You clearly… did your best,” Jon replies. He’s choosing his words very carefully. It’s honestly rather endearing for someone who’s normally so blunt. 

Martin finishes eating rather quickly, but continues picking at what’s left on his plate as he watches Jon. There are a lot of things about him that Martin has never noticed, like the little premature grey hairs strewn throughout his ponytail, or the little freckles that dot his dark skin like stars, or the little wrinkles in his clothes that otherwise lack stains…

… or the sudden jolt Martin gets when the two make eye contact.

Any good witch knows the value of eyes in understanding a person. If you know how deeply to dig behind a person’s irises, you can learn all sorts of things. Just behind Jon’s irises, on a layer so shallow Martin doesn’t even realize he’s delved into it at first, lies a secret. It’s a pale green in color, shifting like steam above a cup of tea. Martin shakes his head, trying to clear the lurching in his stomach.

Martin knows that color. His father used to invite friends over to the house, friends whose arms were covered in tattoos that glowed that blinding shade of lime. Friends Martin was instructed very carefully not to give his name to. Friends Martin was expressly forbidden to accept gifts from.

Martin places a hand on the table for support.

What an idiot I’ve been.

Jon gives him a questioning look, but Martin doesn’t respond. He simply stands and, without clearing his plate, rushes to his cot in Document Storage. He pulls a small box out of its hiding place, the one he keeps his magical tools in, and draws out his bag of runestones. There are questions to be answered, and he won’t delay any longer. 

Chapter Text

After Martin runs off, Jon fiddles with his fork, turning it over in his fingers while staring out the break room door. His skin is crawling. Something isn’t right. 

But maybe Martin just isn’t feeling well. That’s the most likely thing; he has been through an extremely traumatic event rather recently. Anything could have set him off. Besides, he had begun to look rather queasy before he left the room, and the pasta was… questionable at best. Maybe he's feeling ill, and in that case it’s best to leave him alone. On the other hand, if Martin is having some sort of flashback, it may be best for Jon to check up on him. And if he is ill and needs to be left alone, he’ll probably say so.

Jon goes back and forth on this for a moment before resolving to check up on his assistant. 

The door to Document Storage is, as he expects, shut and locked. He hesitates before tapping softly right in the centre of the door.

“Martin?” Jon asks, trying his hardest to sound gentle. “Is everything… alright?”

There’s a few moments of silence in which Jon briefly considers unlocking the door with magic. 

Then, a muffled response: “I’m- I’m fine, just- just feeling a bit, er- a bit faint, that’s all. I’ll- I’ll clean up after the lasagne, don’t worry.”

That’s not at all suspicious, Jon thinks, but he keeps it to himself. Instead, he says, “That’s alright, Martin. I’ll take care of it.”

“No!” Martin insists, in a tone uncharacteristically sharp. “I’ll do it. I just need to have a lie-down for a minute.”

Jon’s smart enough to know when to drop an issue. He turns away, trying to ignore the clutter in the break room, and heads to his office. He slumps in his chair when he gets there, rubbing his temples. 

Martin is lying about feeling ill. Jon knows that. He’s always known what it sounds like when people lie, in part because he’s never been able to do it effectively himself. He’s always been fascinated by the human ability to just flat-out say things that weren’t true as if they were, and he’s watched the different ways they do it.

He’s noticed there’s always something off when they do it. Sometimes it’s a waver in their voices, sometimes it’s a twitch of an eyebrow or a glance to the left. With Martin, it’s none of these. He’s one of the best kinds of liars- the ones who disguise the fact that they’re lying extremely well except for the truth of the matter hiding just underneath their words.Those liars never want to lie. They do it because they feel they must.

Still, he wishes he knew what was really going on.

Martin is, as he said he would be, right as rain the next day. Neither of them mentions the pasta misadventure, not even as Tim and Sasha goad them in their own ways. Jon does ask how Martin is feeling when the two eat breakfast together, though Martin is reticent to answer. He’s cold to Jon all day, only speaking to him when it’s absolutely unavoidable. 

The fact that neither of them speak about it doesn’t mean Jon doesn’t dwell on it, though. He runs over every detail in his mind, picking them apart the same way he used to do with the plots of mystery books, like he now does with statements. 

The whole evening had gone rather normally, at least, from what Jon can tell. There is one moment, though, that he keeps coming back to.

He and Martin had avoided making eye contact most of the night. This is par for the course for them, but there had been one moment in which Jon had slipped up. He had locked eyes with Martin, and for a moment, it had seemed he couldn’t look away. He had tried almost immediately, but the strain it had caused his eyes had seemed to stop them from budging in either direction. He had felt, in that moment, a similar way to how he did when he read statements. He felt he was being watched, yes. The only difference is that last night, it had come from inside him. 

He can only think about it for so long, though, before he starts to feel the pull towards his work. He pulls out a statement, turns on the tape recorder, and begins to read:

“Statement of Andre Ramao, regarding a series of misplaced objects lost over the course of three months. Original statement given June 6th 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims…”

The statement isn’t a long one, as they go. It’s just as viscerally unsettling as the others, of course, and the presence of Mikaele Salaesa is concerning, but he’s got Tim looking into that.

His train of thought, though, is interrupted by a fuzzy dot out of the corner of his eye.

A spider on the wall. Jon shudders. 

“I see you…” he murmurs, rolling up a stack of papers. He hates spiders. He watches as it scuttles over to the shelf, and moves as quietly as he can. Once he’s close enough, he delivers a swift blow to the side of the shelf, successfully squashing the thing, but also causing the entire shelf to lean over and collapse.

The thud attracts Sasha, who opens the door almost immediately. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Jon replies, thoroughly embarrassed. “A… a spider.”

Sasha nods, then looks at the remains of the shelf. “A spider?”

“Yeah. I tried to kill it… the shelf collapsed.”

Sasha nods again, understanding. “I swear, cheap shelves are… did you get it?”

“Ah…” Jon double-checks for the remains of the spider. “I hope so. Think so. Nasty, bulbous-looking thing.”

Sasha chuckles. “Well, I won’t tell Martin.”

Martin loves spiders. “Oh, God. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.”

Sasha laughs at that, then stops all of a sudden to look at the pile of debris. “Look,” she says, moving over to point to a hole in what used to be the shelf’s back panel.

“Oh,” Jon exclaims. “Got dented when the shelf collapsed, I guess.”

“No; it goes right through. I thought this was an exterior wall?”

“It should be,” Jon replies, more confused by the second.

“Hmm… I think it’s just plasterboard. Do you see anything?”

Jon kneels down to look closer at the pile of debris. He does see something, and it definitely isn’t good.

“Sasha…”

Jon barely has time to tell Sasha to run before a torrent of worms pours out from the husk of destroyed furniture.

Chapter Text

Martin isn’t sure what he expects from all the commotion, but it isn’t this. The writhing, white mass that carpets the floor is horridly familiar, and Martin feels his muscles lock up. It’s exactly the same.

Jon’s dropped something. The tape recorder. Like an idiot, he backtracks to try and pick it up, and everything inside Martin wants to scream that he should just let it go! It isn’t worth it!

But Jon gets it. 

“Christ!” Martin exclaims, finally coming back to himself and the danger he’s in. He joins Jon and Sasha in running from the host. “What’s going on?”

Jon’s eyes are wild and desperate. “Shut up and get the extinguishers!” he snaps, more severe than he’s ever sounded. 

Martin doesn’t understand at first. “What?”

“The CO2! Get the goddamn CO2!”

“Right! Right, right, right.”

He pulls a fire extinguisher down from the shelf. He has a decent stash in document storage, but it’s too far away. He fiddles with the hose. The worms are closing in.

“NOW!” Jon shouts, and Martin sprays the CO2 blindly. It holds back some of them, but not enough to stop the torrent entirely.

“There’s too many!” Martin’s voice is trembling. Not again. Not again. Not again.

Just keep spraying!” Sasha shouts.

“We need to go!” Jon pants, clearly out of breath from sprinting for so long.

“Where?” Sasha asks, incredulously. If the worms have gotten into the Institute in the first place…

Jon stammers, and Sasha turns to Martin. “Do you see Prentiss? If we can get her--”

Even if Martin could see past the horde, it wouldn’t mean anything. Jane could be anywhere. “I- I- I don’t see her!”

They need somewhere to go. Somewhere sealed. Somewhere safe.

Document storage.

Martin grabs Jon and Sasha by the sleeves. “Let’s go!”

Sasha volunteers to remove the worms from Jon. This is probably for the best, since Martin isn’t exactly feeling charitable toward his boss, and he was barely able to handle pulling the worms out of himself. He fiddles with the tape recorder, trying to get it to work. Eventually, the telltale whirring starts up again, right as Jon cries out in pain.

Jon and Sasha bicker about his pain tolerance for a moment. Martin scans the room. From under one of the shelves, he sees the glint of his familiar’s eyes.

I’m okay, Saffron whispers. 

Martin nods to show he understands.

Sasha taps him on the shoulder, gesturing to the corkscrew she’s been using to extract the insects from their boss. “I’m not sure why you have this. Drinking in the Archives?”

It takes Martin a moment to register. “I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting into someone laterally wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.”

Sasha nods, albeit a bit concerned. Jon looks equally disturbed.

“Look,” Martin finally snaps. “You guys got to go home every day, okay? I didn’t! I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to do when… well, you know, this happens.”

“Thank you,” Jon responds, his tone nearly kind enough to make Martin forget what he’s been hiding this whole time, what he’s done.

“That’s why we’re here?”

Martin nods. “The room’s…” he tries to think of a way to talk about the protective charms on the door that won’t make him sound like a lunatic. “Sealed. I checked myself when I moved in.”

Jon nods. “Climate controlled, as well. Strong door. Soundproof.” He sighs and scans the room, pensive. “These old files are far better protected than we ever were.” He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Alright. I’ll grant you it’s a good place to lay low, but--”

“They could still come in through the air con,” Sasha interjects.

“Not easily,” Jon replies, “and not en masse. It is… actually safe.”

Martin can’t hide the childish satisfaction this gives him. “Ha!”

“Except, of course, that we’re trapped.”

This gives all three of them pause.

“Why record it?” Sasha asks, finally. “Before, in the office. It, it was stupid going for the tape recorder like that, and then when you dropped it out there--”

“I said I was sorry,” Jon sighs. “If I’d known Martin had another one stashed in here, I never would have…” he looks away, pulls the rubber band out of his hair. Martin can’t help but notice that there’s so much more grey in it than he’s noticed. Jon isn’t much older than him, and though Martin doesn’t trust him, he feels for him. To have a secret so large that it boils just below the surface all the time… Martin understands how hard that can be. 

“No,” Sasha sighs. “It’s- It’s fine, Jon.”

When he’d read the runes, Martin hadn’t gotten a definite answer. Even Saffron admitted they couldn’t make heads or tails of what Jon is, but it had seemed to have something to do with the Fae. It wasn’t clear what ties Jon had to them, but they were strong enough that Martin owed Jon the same way anyone owed the Fae for a “gift”. He’d repaid that debt with the lasagne and the countless cups of tea, which was such a small thing that it had led Martin to guess that Jon wasn’t Fae himself. He’d assumed since that night that Jon knew what he had done. But after seeing something so small as his risky attempt at rescuing the tape recorder weigh him down with remorse, Martin isn’t so sure.

“Just…” Sasha continues, “I just don’t understand. I thought you hated the damn thing. You’re always going on about it.”

“I do!” Jon reassures her. “I did. I just… I don’t want to become a mystery. I refuse to become another goddamn mystery.”

“What?” Sasha furrows her brow. 

Jon runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Look, even if you ignore the walking soil-sack out there, and the fact that we are probably minutes from death, there is still so much more happening here.”

Martin bristles. “I’m not really sure we can ignore the--”

Jon looks up at the ceiling and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Every real statement just leads… deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet. And to top it all, I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude.” What has Gertrude got to do with anything? Martin thinks this line of thinking is kind of lacking in perspective, but he doesn’t interrupt. He knows that’s pointless once Jon starts monologuing. “Officially she’s still missing,” Jon continues, “but Elias is no help and the police were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality. If I die, wormfood or… something else, whatever, I’m going to make damn sure the same doesn’t happen to me. Whoever takes over from me is going to know exactly what happened.”

Sasha smiles bemusedly. “You don’t think that would… put them off?”

Jon laughs at this, the most genuine laugh Martin has ever heard from him. “I hope so. Only an idiot would stay in this job.”

Martin chuckles. “Wouldn’t that make you an idiot?”

A smile creeps at the corners of Jon’s lips. “Yes, Martin. That was my point.”

Martin walks toward the window, trying to get a glimpse of what’s going on.

“Can you see what’s going on out there?” Sasha asks.

The window is filthy, and besides that, covered in worms, but Martin can catch a glimpse of the outside. He says as much.

Jon turns to look at Martin. “What can you see?”

Martin peers through the dust and bugs. “Worms seem to have backed off a bit. Ooh! There’s the other tape recorder!”

“Any sign of Prentiss?” Sasha asks.

“No. No, it looks like they’re…” Martin searches for the right words. “They’re waiting, I think.”

“For what?” Jon asks, concerned.

“I don’t know,” Martin shrugs. “Tim, maybe?”

That’s when he realizes what he’s just said. Tim isn’t with them. He didn’t make it to document storage.

He has no idea what’s going on.

Chapter Text

Jon’s stomach drops. He’s managed, despite his own stupidity, to get himself, Sasha and Martin to a safe place, only to have forgotten Tim in his panic. 

“Oh God!” Sasha exclaims. Jon almost laughs at that.

“I think he was out at lunch,” Martin says, also rather panicked.

“Quick, someone call him,” Sasha says, patting her pockets for her own cell phone. “Tell him not to come back inside.”

Jon shakes his head. “There’s no signal in here. We just have to hope he heard the noise.” Bile is beginning to rise in his throat, so he swallows to try and push it back down. He has to seem collected. He is their boss, after all. 

The three settle into a tense silence for a minute, Jon sitting braced against the wall and Sasha sinking to the floor. Martin moves over to his cot and takes a seat there.

Eventually, Sasha breaks that silence. “Jon, what do you mean by ‘real statements?’”

Jon sighs. He’s hoped he wouldn’t have to elaborate, especially under the circumstances. “You know what I mean. The ones that have weird wrinkles, or that just seem to have something…” he shifts his weight. “Something solid to them. They all have one thing in common.”

“They don’t record digitally,” Sasha interjects.

“And we have to use the tape recorder,” Jon nods. “At this stage, if it records to my laptop, I almost don’t bother. I don’t--”

All of a sudden, Martin leaps up and rushes to the window. “There! There, there, there! I see him!”

“What?” Jon asks.

“Tim! Tim’s outside.”

Sasha’s eyes go wide, and in that moment Jon knows she’s on the edge of doing something rash. “He doesn’t know. He doesn’t see them.” She moves to the window with Martin.

Martin and Sasha begin calling for Tim, yelling as loud as their voices will allow. Jon shakes his head. It’s no use, and he says as much.

Prentiss is closing in on Tim, from the sounds of things. As much as Jon wants to help, he knows they can’t do anything with putting themselves in danger. And if failing Tim means saving his other assistants, Jon will accept the risk.

After a few more moments of shouting, though, Sasha boils over. She throws open the door, which hits Martin’s cot, knocking the tape recorder to the ground. 

“What- Sasha- Sasha, NO!” Jon shouts, springing into action. He tries to grab her arm, but she’s too fast. She sprints toward Tim, yelling for him to watch out, and Jon sees Prentiss close in on them before the two run off at a dead sprint down another corridor.

Martin looks to Jon. “Should we go after them?”

Jon shakes his head. “We’ll just be endangering ourselves more. Besides, if they make it out, maybe they can get help.”

Martin nods, and returns to watching at the window. Jon picks up the tape recorder, examining the damage. He still feels weak from the blood loss, and the idea of trying to use the muscles he’s just had parasites pulled out of isn’t exactly appealing, but he can at least fix this. A button has popped off, but it’s easily popped back on. In no time at all, he’s got the recorder running again.

“Right, there we go,” he says. “Martin, what do you see?”

Martin turns, rather startled. “Hm? What?”

Jon gestures to his leg. “I can’t really stand up yet. I need you to describe what’s going on.” He points to the tape recorder. “For the record.”

Martin stammers through a description of what he can see from the window. “There was just a lot of movement,” he explains, “and shouting, and- and wriggling--” 

Jon tries to keep his tone gentle. “Stay with it, Martin. Tim. What happened to Tim?”

“They got split up and he ran into the office. You said that’s where you made the hole. When you were recording. And they all came through, so… he’s dead. He’s dead in there and he’s covered in worms and that’s it.” Martin’s hands are shaking. Jon can feel his fear from where he’s sitting.

“We don’t know that.”

Martin takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Maybe… Maybe he found the spare CO2.”

“Spare? What? Where?” Jon goes back over the events of the past half-hour in his mind. “I never saw any.”

Martin reddens. “I… I hid them in old case file boxes.”

“What? Why?” That’s incredibly irresponsible. If he had told Jon they were there, how much of this could have been avoided? 

“So the worms didn’t know they were there!” Martin blurts out. Evidently seeing Jon’s thoroughly peeved expression, he looks away. “Look, I know it’s stupid--”

“It is,” Jon replies. “They’re just… they’re just unclassified parasites. They don’t have consciousness, they can’t plan, they’re just... an unthinking infection.”

Martin scoffs, incredulous. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what? ” Jon asks, incredulous. Martin is making no sense whatsoever, which isn’t entirely new for him, but is incredibly annoying given the circumstances.

“Push the sceptic thing so hard!” Martin sinks down to sit on the floor across from Jon and sighs. “I mean, it made sense at first, but now? After everything we’ve seen, after everything you’ve read…” He gestures at the room around them. “I hear you recording statements and you- you just dismiss them. You tear them to pieces like they’re wasting your time, but half of the ‘rational’ explanations you give are actually more far-fetched than just accepting it was a- a ghost or something. I mean, for the gods’ sake John, we’re literally hiding from some kind of worm… queen… thing, and you’ve been doing actual Fae magic on me for, like, a couple weeks now! How can you still not believe?”

A lump rises in Jon’s throat. “I… I’ve been what? ” 

Martin’s brow furrows. “You… you don’t know? ”

“No! Of course I don’t know, Martin! First of all, the Fae don’t exist--”

Martin rolls his eyes. “Don’t give me that crap. I’m a witch, Jon. I know Fae when I…” Martin claps a hand over his own mouth. “Bollocks.”

Jon huffs. He can’t do this anymore. “Well, at least you’ve finally admitted it.”

Martin’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry, you knew?”

Jon realizes rather quickly that he hasn’t thought this through. He could try lying, though that’s never worked for him before owing to his accursed genealogy; he could also try talking around the subject, but that’s never worked with Martin before. He sighs. “Yes, I knew. It wasn’t exactly hard to tell after…” he mulls over the best way to phrase what happened. “After I… met your familiar.”

Martin curses. “Bound to happen at some point. They really cannot stay where I ask them to.”

Jon laughs. “An ongoing problem, then?”

Martin smiles. “You have no idea.” He reaches a hand underneath one of the shelves, and the same little rat from before- Saffron- scurries up onto his shoulder. He gestures toward it. “Meet Saffron. Saffron, meet Jon.” Saffron nuzzles Martin’s ear before scurrying back down into the front pocket of his trousers. “But, really, how could you have done magic and not known about it? Without even believing in the Fae?”

Jon swallows. He has no idea what the consequences will be if he tells Martin. Then again, the consequences of his very existence thus far have been rather dire, and what could be worse than being besieged by a possessed worm-woman? “Of- of course I believe. Of course I do. I…” Jon searches for a way to explain. “Have you ever noticed that I won’t touch certain things? Nails, some of the older mirrors? They won’t kill me, not like they would a- a real Fae. I’m… I’m only half Fae. I have most of the same powers as normal Fae, from what I understand, though I’ve never been sure about the extent of those abilities.” He pauses. “You said I… did something to you?” Jon watches Martin’s eyes carefully. If he’s hurt someone accidentally using powers he didn’t know he had… how many times has he done that?

Martin shrugs. “I mean, you clearly didn’t know. It’s just… you know about the whole gifts thing, right? Where if--”

“If you accept a gift from the Fae, you have to repay it.” Jon nods, suddenly realizing what’s going on.

“I started getting nightmares,” Martin says. “They weren’t as bad as the ones about Jane, so I wasn’t complaining, but the nausea wasn’t exactly great, and--”

“Martin,” Jon interjects. “I- I’m sorry. I had no idea I had…”

Martin sits down next to Jon. “It’s fine, Jon. It’s over now, and at least you know.”

There’s something so soft behind Martin’s eyes, something so kind, and Jon feels his heart weighed down as if it were filling with water. He has to say something before the emotions overtake him. “Thank you.”

Martin nods. “I do have one question, though. Why do you pretend like that? I know the Fae are pretty strict about who knows about them, but I don’t understand how you know the supernatural exists and you still--”

“Because I’m scared, Martin.” Jon feels his voice shake, and hates himself for it. “Because when I record these statements, it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will… know somehow. The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer.” 

Jon thinks about all the times, when he was young, his grandmother had hurried him out of dark alleys after meeting witches and fortune-tellers and priests. She would never answer his questions; she said it was better that way. He asks Martin if he can still see anything out of the window. Not much has changed.

Maybe things were better, then, he thinks. But he’s grown. His grandmother isn’t here. And he has questions for Martin, too.

“Martin, why are you here?”

Chapter Text

Jon looks at Martin a little too expectantly. 

“Well,” he says after a brief pause, “Prentiss is out there and you can’t run, so--”

Jon rolls his eyes. “I mean the Archives in general. Why haven’t you quit?”

Martin feels his ears redden. It’s just like Jon to ask these things in the rudest way possible. “Are you giving me my review now?”

It’s Jon’s turn to blush. “No. I mean, we’re clearly doing the heart-to-heart thing, and truth be told, the question’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of… this.” Jon gestures around the room and back to himself, and Martin has to stifle a chuckle. “Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew, having your boss accidentally use magic to compel you to pay back debts that shouldn’t exist... even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job. Why are you still here?”

Martin thinks about that. When he’d taken the job, it had mostly been out of desperation. His mother was insisting on mundane doctors at the time, refusing to let him help her, and he couldn’t exactly let her die. Eventually, though, she’d relented. He’d thought about quitting, but… “Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I…” he sighs. He doesn’t want to sound melodramatic, but he has to tell the truth. After all, lying hasn’t exactly gotten him anywhere. “I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t move on, and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.”

Jon gets an odd look about him. “Martin… you’re not… you didn’t die here, did you?”

Martin lets out a confused chuckle. “What? No! I mean… what?!”

Jon’s ears go a little red. “I just… the way you phrased that… and it would explain why no one ever noticed your… your habits before, and--”

“And you thought I was a ghost?” Martin is fully laughing now. “Jon, ghosts can’t do magic. They don’t have familiars, either, and you’ve met Saffron--”

“No, it’s--”

Martin takes a deep breath, trying to sober himself. “It’s just… whatever web these statements have got you caught up in, well… I’m there, too. We all are, I think.” They sit in silence for a moment, before another chuckle bubbles up out of Martin’s chest. “A ghost? Really?”

Jon shakes his head. “Shut up, Martin.”

Martin takes a deep breath, leaning back against the wall. Saffron climbs out of his pocket and perches on his shoulder. Martin puts his hand up so Saffron can climb onto it, bringing them to eye level. He could just talk to them normally, but he’d rather not have to deal with Jon not knowing what’s going on. 

“Can you tell if anyone’s managed to get help?” he asks. Saffron shakes their head.

Do you want the short answer or the long one? they reply.

Martin peeks out the window. The door and walls are still covered in worms, but it’s no worse than before. “Both.”

Saffron nods, their nose twitching. The short answer is no, no one’s managed to get help. The long answer is- well, I can’t tell where any of them are. The rest of the Institute staff seem to have evacuated, except-- Saffron freezes. They sniff the air for a moment, then skitter back into Martin’s pocket. Something’s wrong. The walls aren’t secure.

“What do you mean?”

I mean you need to get away from the walls, Martin! They squeak out loud, thoroughly distressed. Jon looks up. 

“What’s wrong? Is your familiar--”

“I don’t know!” Martin moves over to Jon, hesitant, and tries to help him stand. “But Saffron says we need to move. Now. Something about the walls?”

That’s when the banging starts on the door. It’s Jane. Martin can feel it distinctly, even through the cloying energy that’s been suffocating the air since she first arrived. 

He steels himself. He’s had to cast this spell before, but it took a lot out of him. Hopefully he shouldn’t have to hold it for long.

“ A bhuí le Rí na bhFeart go bhfeiceam,

Mura mbeam beo ina dhiaidh ach seachtain,

Gráinne Mhaol agus míle gaiscíoch,

Ag fógairt fáin ar Ghallaibh. ”

May it please the King of Miracles that we might see,

Although we may live for a week once after,

Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand warriors...

Dispersing the foreigners!

He’s done this spell so many times, he’s surprised at how much he trips over the Gaelic. It seems to be working, though; he feels the magic flowing around his hands and against the wall and door. Martin is prepared to hold up this spell as long as it takes, but he isn’t sure what he’ll do if- no, when- he can’t hold it anymore. Could he fight Jane off? He supposes that would depend on whether she still knew how to use magic. Does she? He’s almost panicking now. Last time, Jane had waited for him for days, hoping he would drop. There was no telling how long they could make it. Even if help did arrive, would they make it down here? 

Martin’s train of thought is halted by a crash from behind him. From a new hole in the wall has appeared Tim, covered in blood and dust, staggering from inside the hole like some sort of CO2-snorting messiah.

“Hi guys!” Tim winks cheerfully, swaying and slightly off-balance.

“Tim!” Jon exclaims. “What the hell? I thought… how did you--”

“You made it!” Martin hears himself shout.

Tim laughs. “Funny story, really. I ran into the office, worms everywhere, horrible death and everything, tripped and fell over some boxes, and there were like, twenty cans of gas in there!” He’s gesturing wildly and nearly falls to the floor, but Martin catches him. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, trying to hold Tim steady. “You seem a bit…”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Tim laughs. “Gas…. A bit light-headed. Not a lot of ventilation in the tunnels. Come on!” He climbs back into the hole in the wall and gestures for Jon and Martin to follow.

Jon shrinks back. “Into the tunnels?”

Tim nods. “Yeah! Actually, not that many worms in there anymore. I think they’ve mostly gone into the Archive. Although the ones down here are faster for some reason. And quieter.” 

Martin shudders.

“You’re not bitten, are you?” Jon asks, pulling his hair back again with the rubber band on his wrist.

Tim shakes his head. “Don’t think so. Have a look!”

Martin has gone drinking with Tim enough times to know he should look away. Jon has no such luck, it seems.

 “Yes, alright, Tim,” Martin hears Jon say, a rather amusing crack in his voice. “You look fine. Put them back on, please.”

Ignoring Tim as he fumbles with his absurdly large belt buckle, Martin moves to have a look at Jon’s leg. It’s still bleeding, but there isn’t much time. 

“Can you walk, Jon?” he asks. 

Jon tries his weight on his leg, then shakes his head. “No, but I can limp.”

Tim, finally having gotten his trousers fastened, interjects. “Then let’s go!”

Jon nods and Martin allows him to shift some weight onto his shoulders. Even through all the blood and dust and CO2 fumes, he can somehow smell Jon’s cologne. 

“Can you pass me the tape recorder?” Jon asks, once he’s got a good grip on Martin’s shoulder.

Martin nods. “I think it’s running out, though.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Fine. I suppose I can turn it on when we’re being eaten alive.”
Tim furrows his brow. “Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin?”

Martin tries to hide his blushing. “Oh. I, well… I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a certain…” he searches for a way to say it that won’t sound pretentious. “Lo-fi charm.”

He feels Jon’s gaze on him as they enter the tunnels. It isn’t judgmental, exactly. Mostly, it seems, it’s curious. Martin tries to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. This isn’t the time for that kind of thinking.

Chapter Text

In the week following the siege on the Archives, Jon tries desperately to carry on as normal despite Elias Bouchard’s insistence that he go home. However, there are some days where the facade just won’t hold. On those days, he wanders like a ghost through the place, gaunt and tired and more on-edge than he would have thought possible before. There’s a constant ache at the pit of his stomach as he thinks of what happened. They found Gertrude. They found Gertrude. And she was shot to death. Surrounded by tapes. Hidden in the tunnels. These thoughts, on days like this, are the only ones occupying his mind.

Today is one of those days. It is, as it increasingly seems to be, just Jon and Martin in the Archives at lunch. Martin has a salad. Jon has a few saltines. He hasn’t been able to stomach much recently. He feels Martin watching him with concern and pretends not to notice.

“Jon?” Martin asks, a little hesitantly.

Despite his better judgement, Jon looks up at him. “Yes?”

“Is that… is that all you’ve had to eat today?”

Jon looks back down at his saltines. “I… haven’t been very hungry recently.”

Martin tilts his head in that concerned way that Jon hates and finds endearing in equal measure. “You’ve still got to eat something, you know. The doctors said you needed--”

“They’re human doctors, Martin. You and I both know they know what I need about as much as I know what a snail needs.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “Alright, that’s fair. But everything needs sustenance. And you are at least partly human.”

Jon sighs. “I suppose you’re right. But anything I eat, it just… I can’t get through it.”

Martin nods. “You’ve been through… pretty much Hell. It makes sense that you’d be having trouble.”

Jon breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you unders--”

Martin cuts him off. “But you can’t live on saltine crackers forever. And seeing as you won’t go home…” Jon sits there, watching Martin think like a small child watches a teacher who’s scolding them. “If I magic some tea for you to keep you going, will you try and eat more tonight?”

Jon shifts his weight in his seat. He’s had magic done on him before, and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. He’s just not sure how he’ll feel about it right now. That’s when his stomach starts to turn. The familiar lightheadedness of hunger begins to press in on his head, and he’ll give anything to make it stop. 

“Alright,” he finally says. Martin smiles at that, and Jon can tell he’s genuinely pleased. 

“I’ll be back in a bit. I know what to do for this, but I need to go to Tesco for a few things. Just… stay there, okay? Don’t overexert yourself; you’ll probably pass out.”

Jon nods weakly. He hasn’t really realized how little energy he has until now. He’s not sure he could get up if he tried.

He watches the minutes tick by on the clock above the sink. His head feels, somehow, increasingly tighter and light as air. He leans back, pressing two fingers against the bridge of his nose. It helps for a moment, but after that it only gets worse. He lays his head down on the table and feels himself drifting off ever so slightly.

His dozing doesn’t last long, though. He hears the familiar click of Elias’s soles on the concrete floor, and lifts his head.

Elias leans against the door. “Jon! I thought I’d find you here.”

Jon tries to ignore the shivers down his spine. “Hello, Elias,” he replies flatly.

Elias sits down in the same chair Martin had sat in minutes ago, pushing aside the thin plastic salad bowl he’d been eating out of and throwing a look of disgust at the remains of chicken and greens stuck with dressing to its sides. Jon straightens up a bit, trying to look less haggard than he knows he is.

Elias folds his hands. “I thought I’d asked you to go home, Jon.”

Jon tries with all his might not to roll his eyes. “I’m fine, really. I can still do my job just fine.”

Elias nods. “Right. I’m sure that’s why you’ve only been able to stomach a few crackers all day and you look like you’re about to collapse.”

Elias shouldn’t know what Jon has eaten today. Now that he thinks about it, Elias knows a lot of things he shouldn’t, but the thought dies halfway across his mind. 

“I think,” Jon replies coldly, “the best thing for me right now is to carry on as usual.”

Elias inhales deeply, like an exhausted teacher explaining maths for the forty-fifth time. “Fine. But at the first sign of any issues, you need to go home. Do I make myself clear?”

Jon nods. He is absolutely not going to do that, but he desperately wants this conversation to be over. 

“Good.” Elias smiles a bit, but not in the warm way that Martin had. Elias’s smile is cold, and silvery somehow, slipping away like mercury off a tray. Jon attempts to continue eating his saltines, but the nausea from not having eaten anything makes that damn near impossible. Elias doesn’t leave. He simply sits there, his eyes on the clock. Even though he and Jon aren’t making eye contact, Jon still knows it isn’t the clock Elias is watching. It causes a certain pressure to build up inside him, one that isn’t caused by his hunger or the trauma of the last few days. He’s irritated, but more than that, some deep part of him is afraid.

When he can’t stand it any longer, Jon asks: “Is there something you needed, Elias?”

Elias grins again, turning to face Jon again. “Why, Jon, I thought you’d never ask.” Jon bites his tongue. He’s being spoken to, once again, like he’s a child. It’s more or less alright when Martin does it; he can tell it isn’t on purpose then, and there’s no ulterior motive behind it. But since Elias’s… proposal, well, Jon can never be sure.

Elias reaches into his pocket and pulls out a necklace. It’s made of a metal Jon isn’t familiar with, like silver, but if it shone green instead of white. It’s small, probably a choker, and curls elegantly around the little emeralds set into it. As he sets it on the table in front of Jon, it makes an impossible, beautiful chiming noise.

“I was wondering,” Elias continues, “if you’ve given any more thought to my offer. I have certain… friends prepared to arrange the ceremony for us, if it’s something you find appealing.” Even in his current state, Jon knows there’s something wrong here. Elias probably didn’t come down here just to reprimand him for coming in to work. 

After a long pause, Jon nods. “I have. And I don’t think it’s… appropriate. The Institute’s just been invaded by… what used to be Jane Prentiss, and there’s an investigation into Gertrude… and even without that, youou are my boss, after all, and maybe if you weren’t, things would be different, but…” Jon trails off. Things would absolutely not be different. Jon knows that well enough. Elias seems to know it too. A shadow of dark fury passes over his face, and it would be imperceptible if Jon hadn’t felt it at his very core. He wants to fold in on himself. But just as quickly as it came, that anger is gone. Elias calmly pockets the necklace again. 

“I understand,” he says coolly. “Shall I make a cup of tea, then? It should help bring up your strength a bit.”

Jon doesn’t exactly trust this offer, but he isn’t in a position to refuse. Who knows how long Martin will be gone? And besides, if Elias has just tried to propose to him twice, surely he wouldn’t hurt him. He nods, and Elias turns on the electric kettle.

He makes inane small talk in the few minutes it takes for him to brew the tea for both of them, and the effort of talking is almost enough to distract Jon from the flash of green light from Elias’s tattoos. It’s so quick, Jon thinks he might have imagined it.

He takes a very small sip of his tea, at first. It doesn’t taste or smell off in any way, but that doesn’t stop him from finding it suspicious. But Elias seems to be drinking it, so he relaxes a bit. He does have to admit, it makes him feel better.

Elias stands to leave when he’s finished his own cup, but pauses at the door. “I’m glad we got to spend this time together, Jon. I had hoped you would have answered otherwise, but I do hope you feel better soon.”
Elias seems much less off-putting now than he had when he’d first come in, but that doesn’t stop the odd, dirty feeling under Jon’s skin from intensifying. He tries to muster a polite smile, but Elias has already gone.

Jon does go home at the end of the day. Martin’s spellwork has helped a lot- he was able to eat an entire cheese sandwich for dinner, and the nausea was quickly overtaken by a warm feeling in his chest and the sound of Martin’s slightly off-pitch singing in the back of his mind. He can’t deny that he needs rest, now, and he settles onto the sofa feeling calmer than he has in a while. 

At least, that’s how he feels for a few minutes. When he goes into the bathroom to shower for the first time in a few days, he feels his nose begin to run. When he wipes it away on a tissue, he finds the deep red of his own blood.

That’s odd, but it could just be a side effect of poor sleep and dehydration. He’s always been rather sickly, and he doesn’t think too much of it. He cleans it up and waits for the bleeding to stop before he gets in the shower. 

When he does climb into the shower, he can’t seem to get the temperature right. It’s either blazing hot or freezing cold, and no matter what he does, he can’t get it to something stable. Frustrated, he gives up, goes for the dry shampoo, and pulls on a pair of flannel pyjama trousers. When he pulls his hair back into its usual bun, the room starts to spin. Dots of black and green dance across his vision, and his nose begins to bleed again. The faint sound of Martin’s singing in his mind is replaced by a low growl, growing louder and louder until Jon places a hand on the wall to try and keep his balance. This isn’t normal. None of it makes any sense.

Something is wrong.

Chapter Text

When he wakes up and heads to the break room, Martin is almost glad to see that Jon isn’t there. That means he hasn’t stayed in the Archives through the night, which gives Martin hope that maybe his spell has done a little more to help Jon than he thought. He’d seemed even more wired than usual before Martin had given him that cup of tea.

Saffron, as per usual, is still asleep, curled up under the mattress in the form of a cat. They’ve gotten rather less careful since that day in document storage, but Martin can’t complain. There’s not much reason to be. Martin puts the kettle on and brews two cups of tea, putting just a little cinnamon in Saffron’s. They love it when he does that, and he’s in a stellar mood this morning. He’d finally picked up some loose-leaf earl grey at Tesco when he’d gone for ingredients to help Jon, so he can finally do his usual tea divination.

 As he carries Saffron’s cup back to document storage, the tendrils of steam that waft from its surface fill him with calm.  He sits on his cot, cross-legged and leaning back against the wall. He hears a sigh from Saffron as they stretch out underneath the cot, leaping up to sit next to Martin.

Have you finished your tea yet? They ask, sleepily nuzzling Martin’s elbow. He smiles.

“Excited, are we? Did you even drink yours?” he chuckles.

Very! And I will, once we read your leaves!

Martin nods. “All right.” He drinks the rest of his tea, leaving about a tablespoon in the cup. Saffron quickly takes the shape of a bird and hops onto his shoulder. He closes his eyes, feeling the connection between them, between himself and Saffron and the tea leaves, and turns the cup over into his hand. He feels Saffron’s giddiness and his own sleepy, early-morning peace. Most importantly, though, he feels the potential in the tea leaves. It’s like the sound of an old book opening and all of its pages sloughing back as the reader finds what they’re looking for. 

He savors this connection for a moment. It feels like coming home, to a place where he has everything he needs, a place where he’s safe. Soon, though, he feels both Saffron and his own intuition urging him to open his eyes. He obeys.

What he sees in his cup is troubling. All the leaves have gathered around the rim, which is pretty normal for his daily tea practice as he’s only ever asking about the present. That isn’t what worries him. There are only two symbols in the mug, which is highly irregular: a horseshoe with a snake below it.

His stomach drops. Saffron chirps anxiously. They both know what this means: betrayal. Someone Martin works with, someone he’s meant to be able to trust, has deadly motives.

“Do you think it’s Jon, still?” Martin asks. 

Saffron shakes their head. No. He’s been perfectly honest with you. It’s someone else, but I can’t tell who. It shouldn’t be Sasha or Tim. Granted, I can’t see anything about Jon’s boss, but that could be for no reason at all. I’m really not sure.

Martin shakes his head. “We’ll have to burn that bridge when we come to it. And who knows, it could be because we’re out of practice?” He phrases it like a question because it is one, but Saffron doesn’t answer.

Be careful anyway, they say instead. Don’t get bent out of shape over it, but don’t let your guard down either. I don’t like this.

Martin nods. “You’re right.” He takes a deep breath and checks the time. It’s nearly nine o’clock. “I should probably get ready for work anyway. I’ve got a lot to do today, with Tim and Sasha gone.”

Saffron nuzzles Martin’s neck, their little feathered head slowly transforming into a furry cat’s. I’ll stay here. Come get me if you need anything. 

Martin checks the clock again, then his phone. 11:30. Maybe Jon’s taken the day off. But if that’s the case, why hasn’t he at least texted? He’d seemed like he meant to come in yesterday.

Martin picks up the phone to call him. Worst case scenario, Jon isn’t planning on coming in, maybe chews him out for calling him on his day off. The phone rings and rings and rings, before finally, Martin hears a soft click.

“Hello?” He says hopefully.

“ Hello,” comes Jon’s voice through what’s almost definitely his voicemail. “ You’ve reached the cell phone of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Obviously, I’m unable to come to the phone at the moment. You know what to do.”

Martin rapidly hangs up before the tone. The last thing he needs is to be put on the spot by a robot. Absolutely not. He’ll give it an hour, and if Jon hasn’t called or texted, he’ll just assume he’s taking the day off.

Martin gives it a little more than an hour. For some reason, he’s desperate to see Jon today, so he stays in the Archives until about 15:00. There’s a growing anxiety in his gut, and he worries on a level he doesn’t usually seriously entertain that something might be wrong. He feels his legs begin to fidget one at a time at his desk. This is rapidly followed by his hands. Eventually, he can’t stand it anymore.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters. “I’ll just ask Saffron to take a look and see if he’s okay.”

Martin gets halfway to document storage before Saffron darts into him at full speed. He can feel their frantic energy, and he senses it’s got something to do with what he means to ask them.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

It’s Jon, Saffron says. Something’s wrong. I could hear you wondering if he was alright, so I looked in on him. He needs help. I can’t see much, but he’s at home and something is wrong.

Martin feels a lump rise in his throat. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

No. I just know something’s wrong. He’s in pain. A lot of pain, and if you don’t go help him- I can’t see what will happen if you don’t.

Martin shakes his head. This must have been what his teacup meant. It wasn’t an omen of betrayal; it was a warning. “How can I help him? I mean, I can’t just break into his house--”

Then you won’t have to, Saffron replies. I will. 

Martin purses his lips. He’s disregarded Saffron before. That went badly. And besides that, a snake is nothing to shake a stick at. “Fine,” he says, finally. “Hop in my coat pocket and lead the way.”

Jon’s flat is far too quiet when Martin arrives. Saffron quietly unlocks the door, and Martin creeps into the vestibule.

The place is pretty bare, but Martin can tell Jon’s been there. There’s a blanket cast over the sofa and a mug of cold tea lying on the coffee table in front of it. He can hear, from what must be the bathroom, the sink still running.

He follows the sound around the corner. Jon’s bedroom door is open just a crack, and Martin pauses in front of it. 

Saffron squirms in his pocket. He’s in there.

Martin tenses, his hand just over the door. This is so wrong. This is such a terrible idea. He half-expects to open the door and see Jon standing there, perfectly fine, very angry with him for breaking in, but he knows in his gut that that won’t be the case. Hesitantly, he pushes the door open.

The sight that greets him is terrifying. Jon is lying on the floor next to his bed, half-dressed, with his nose caked in dried blood. Every wiry sinew in his body is tense, and his dark skin is soaked in sweat. He’s breathing heavily, but not steadily, and his sleeping face is contorted in pain. Martin drops to one knee and places a hand on his forehead.

At this, Jon lets out a cry that is at once agonized and pathetic. His forehead grows hot, so hot Martin isn’t sure how he’s still alive. Martin shudders, his eyes growing wide with fear. 

But through all of his terror, his training perseveres. “Jon?” he hears himself ask. “Jon, talk to me. Are you okay? Jon?”

Jon doesn’t answer. He’s choking out syllables every once in a while, but none of them seem to come together as words or sentences.

Saffron leaps out of Martin’s pocket, sniffing Jon’s convulsing form. Almost immediately, they scurry back.

Martin, they whisper, do you know what this is?

Martin shakes his head, frantic. “I’ve got no idea- it’s not a normal illness… some kind of curse, maybe?”

He feels Saffron’s trepidation before their words even enter his mind. Yes, Martin. But it isn’t from a witch.

Martin scans Jon’s convulsing form again and feels the same wave of energy he had felt after he moved into the Archives. The only difference is that now, it’s stronger. It’s stronger, and much, much darker.

“Shit.”

This came from one of the Fae.

Chapter Text

Jon isn’t sure how long he’s been lying on the floor. Minutes? Hours? Days? He thinks he hears something, but he isn’t sure. His vision has gone entirely dark and all of his muscles have tensed in a failed attempt to ease the screaming pain on his skin. He tries to move, occasionally, to get up, but it doesn’t work. His whole body is rebelling. What did Elias put in that tea?

He feels something cool on his head, like ice, but softer. Relief. Only for a moment, though, because the skin of his forehead burns after that, like it had when he tried to use a straightening iron on his hair. But it’s more direct, more intense. He thinks he tries to cry out, but his vocal chords don’t seem to work like they used to.

He hears a voice, like he’s underwater: “ Jon? Jon? Talk to me. Are you okay? Jon?”

It’s Martin. He opens his mouth, tries to spit out some form of explanation, but his vocal cords don’t work. 

Then, Jon feels the coolness from before on his chest and forehead, and his anguish is covered in inky blackness.

When he wakes again, his vision has returned, but the pain hasn’t dissipated. He hears a hoarse cry and realizes it came from his own throat. 

Jon looks around. He’s been moved to his bed. He doesn’t remember moving, doesn’t remember getting up or putting on the shirt that is now soaked in his own sweat, but he does remember Martin’s voice. Had that been real?

He tries to sit up, which he realizes immediately is a mistake. His skin still feels like it’s on fire, and on top of it, his muscles are as sore as they’ve ever been.

He’s not sure how to process what just happened. Had he had some sort of seizure? He examines his bedroom Not much has changed, and it doesn’t seem like he hit anything important going down. 

That’s when he notices the charms. Iron amulets hung not only in all the windows, but all the entryways as well. Someone else has definitely been here.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to wait long to find out who it is. Martin emerges in the doorway, with a mug in hand and Saffron on his shoulder. When he sees Jon is awake, he turns bright red, but that doesn’t stop relief from flooding his eyes.

“Jon…” Martin sets the mug down on Jon’s nightstand and sits on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

Jon opens his mouth to speak, but his throat is raw. “I’ve… been better,” he whispers, and regrets it in an instant. He feels like he just swallowed glass.

Martin nods. “That’s okay. You don’t have to talk right now. The state you were in when we got here…. Let’s just say I’m glad you’re still alive.”

Jon has several questions, but he knows talking is a non-starter. He opens his mouth, weighing the importance of his queries for Martin against the pain asking them will inflict. Martin nods again, and pulls a small notepad out of his back pocket and picks up one of Jon’s pens from his desk. 

“You can write down what you need to say for now.” Jon tries to write, but his hands are too weak to really hold the pen, and it feels like the end of a hot poker. Martin grimaces. “It might be a while before you’re well enough to talk. Fae curses are nasty business. But I guess… do you want to know how I got in here?”

Jon nods, glad Martin understands. 

“Alright. I was at the Institute and you were late, so I gave you a call, and, well…” Martin’s leg begins to fidget. “Saffron told me you were in trouble. They said if I didn’t come help you they had no idea what would happen, so I left work and came here as quickly as I could. Saffron figured out where you live and, uh… picked the lock.”

That explains a lot. 

“Listen, I- I shouldn’t have broken in, okay? I’m sorry about that. But when I got here, you were… you were in a really bad state. And at first, I thought you were just ill, but then… well, no illness looks like that, and witches’ curses are a lot more specific. I know how to break those. But this… the best I could do was knock you out and try hanging iron everywhere to interrupt the curse’s connection to you.” This leaves Jon with even more questions, but they die halfway across his mind. All he knows is that he isn’t alone anymore, and that Martin is here to help him. Martin, who is still talking, trying to justify the break-in. Jon wants to laugh. He’s asked Martin to break into more buildings than he can count. Jon raises a hand to stop him, even though it takes an insane amount of effort. 

He takes a deep breath, bracing himself, and manages a weak “Thank you.” 

Martin looks a little taken aback, but manages an awkward, “Don’t mention it.”

And even though he’s in excruciating pain, Jon  isn’t as afraid as he had been. Martin may not be the best Archival assistant, but he at least knows what he’s doing in this area.

Martin examines Jon, his eyes full of concern. “Do you have any idea what might have brought this on?”

Jon shakes his head. He knows there used to be a curse on him, but when his grandmother had died, she’d left him a letter explaining that he shouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. Then he remembers yesterday in the breakroom. Elias had looked furious, and maybe that flash of green wasn’t just a trick of the light after all. Jon nods, mouthing the word “maybe.”

Martin looks somewhat relieved. “That’s good.” He hands Jon a cup of tea. It’s lukewarm, and it doesn’t seem to hurt as much as whatever Martin had done earlier. “I made this to help with the soreness. I think once you get some rest in an environment the curse can’t break through you’ll be able to talk, and then we can try and figure out what’s happened.”

Jon nods. The tea doesn’t feel good going down, necessarily, but he does manage to drink it all. 

Martin takes the empty mug. “You should probably try and get some sleep. It’ll be one of the best ways for you to recover from this.” 

He starts to leave, but Jon finds himself weakly lifting an arm to stop him. “Can- can you stay?” He knows he won’t be able to sleep with the amount of pain he’s in, and he desperately doesn’t want to be left alone.

Martin nods. “Just… just try and close your eyes for me, okay? I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep.”

Fair enough. Jon acquiesces, trying to relax back into the pillow.

The effect of the tea is almost immediate. It doesn’t stop the burning on his skin, but his muscles no longer ache from the strain of constantly bracing against it. As he begins to drift into something approximating sleep, he feels Martin’s fingertips brush against his own. The same pain as before still follows, but it seems to fade quickly, replaced by the security brought by this small connection.

“You’ll be okay, Jon,” Martin whispers. He must think Jon is fully asleep. “I promise.”

Jon feels a warmth in his chest, a kind of calm he hasn’t felt in a long time. Even though he’s still afraid, he wants to believe Martin. He allows himself this little fiction of certainty, if only for tonight.

Of all the people that would make Jonathan Sims feel truly safe, the last person he expects is Martin Blackwood.

It always does seem to be the last one you'd expect.

Chapter Text

Martin watches as Jon’s shuddering chest slowly begins to settle into a steady rise and fall. It’s labored, yes, but steady. He should keep an eye on Jon for the next several hours, if not a couple of days. His condition was so fragile when Martin had found him that to leave him alone now could be a death sentence. 

It’s only now, after he’s sure Jon is stable, that Martin remembers to breathe. He realizes he’s sweating and heads to the doorway of Jon’s apartment to put away his coat, then heads back to Jon’s room to gently shut the door. He knows Jon asked him to stay, but it feels wrong to just watch him sleep. He checks the time. Gods, it’s nearly 6 p.m. 

He should really find something to eat. It’s been a long time since breakfast and he hadn’t eaten any lunch for some reason. He really should know better, he figures. 

He doesn’t bother checking to see if Jon has food in the house. He’s almost certain that isn’t the case. He considers trying to transfigure a cup of tea into something more substantial, but he’s never been good at transfiguration magic and he figures he’d be better off just ordering a pizza. He picks up the phone, and looks over at Saffron, who’s transformed into a golden labrador retriever and is currently making themself comfortable on Jon’s sofa. 

“Pepperoni’s probably a safe bet, right?” he whispers. 

Saffron nods, and Martin calls the nearest pizza chain. He almost laughs at how mundane it feels, ordering a pizza for himself after saving his boss’s life from a near-fatal curse. The more things change, he supposes, the more they really do stay the same.

When he sits down next to Saffron on the sofa, Martin finally gets a chance to properly examine the apartment. It’s fairly sparse, which isn’t surprising, except for the myriad books lining the mismatched shelving Jon’s got against every wall. There’s a television, which takes Martin by surprise for some reason. Jon has just always struck him as the type of pompous ass to refuse to watch T.V. at all. The few keepsakes Jon does have appear to consist of the crocheted blanket thrown over the sofa, a few glass figurines, and a particular few books on one of the lower shelves that all have matching dust jackets. 

Gods, this is bizarre. Martin leans over into Saffron’s fur.

Something on your mind? they ask. 

“Not really,” Martin replies. “Just…. Did you know this was going to happen? Like, when I started working at the Archives.”

Saffron thinks for a minute. Not really, they answer. Obviously, I knew your life was going to change in some pretty major ways, but I didn’t have any specifics. The future is… interesting, that way. It’s like walking along a path in the woods at night. Sometimes, you have bright spots where you can see exactly what’s going on and you always know where the path is, but the further away from something you are the harder it is to see.

“That makes sense.” Martin has wondered about that for a while. He’s honestly surprised he’s never asked Saffron that question before, but then again, he hasn’t had a reason to. Saffron’s heightened divination abilities haven’t been relevant in years, and back when the incident with Jane had occurred, Martin had been too busy grieving to grill his familiar about what they could and could not see.

Want to know what I can see? Saffron asks.

“Sure,” Martin replies. 

I can see that you care about Jon. You care about him a lot, don’t you? Their tone isn’t exactly cajoling; it’s a genuine question. But the gentleness with which it was asked doesn’t stop it from catching Martin off-guard.

“What do you mean?” Martin stammers. “I- Like, romantically? ”

Saffron sighs. Well, not at first. But that would make sense.

“What?” Martin exclaims, a little louder than he means to. “No. Absolutely not. He’s my boss, for the gods’ sake.”

Alright, Saffron replies. Martin is bitterly convinced that if they had the ability in this form, they’d be laughing. My point is, I can tell he’s important to you. And that’s a good thing.

“Well, thanks, I guess,” Martin replies. He’s still not sure what to make of this conversation, but he does know he’s desperate to get out of it. “I… I’m gonna go check on Jon.”

When he opens the door, Jon is thankfully still asleep. That makes sense; his body has got to be wiped out from spending who-knows-how-long convulsing in a heap on the floor. As Martin advances closer to the edge of the bed, he watches Jon’s breathing. That’s not changed much, though it does seem to have slowed a bit. Maybe his tea is helping.

He can’t deny he does feel a certain responsibility to Jon. Maybe it’s just because he does healing magic, but he feels like keeping Jon safe, keeping him close and out of harm’s way, is what he was meant to do.

He places a hand on Jon’s forehead, tentatively this time. His body temperature has gone down significantly, and while he would have a fever if he were fully human, Martin has no clue what to consider normal in this situation. That’s when he notices the little glimmer on Jon’s cheek.

At first, he assumes it’s something like craft glitter from somewhere, but soon he realizes little green dots are splayed out across his nose and cheekbones. The light coming from them isn’t reflected; it’s nearly dark outside. No, Jon’s freckles, it seems, are glowing.

Martin pulls away his hand and studies Jon’s sleeping face. This doesn’t seem like something he should be worried about. Jon’s brow is as relaxed as Martin has ever seen it, and his temperature hasn’t risen. Is this just something he does?

Martin sits on the edge of the bed, entranced by these little lights. He can’t quite tell what they remind him of, but they seem familiar. 

The stars, he decides. The night before his father had left him and his mother for good, he’d taken Martin stargazing. It had been storming all day, so the ground was wet and muddy as anything, but he’d lain down some sort of magic that Martin hasn’t figured out to this day to keep them warm and dry. Martin remembers being in utter awe at what he saw, thousands of little lights that his father told him each had their own stories. The feeling he’d gotten while looking out at that great expanse- it was the same as the one he’d gotten when he met Jon.

Martin brushes a bit of hair to the side of Jon’s face, tracing the constellations in his mind before coming back to himself.

He’s hurting right now, he reminds himself. There will be time. For now, I’ve just got to be there for him. That’s all I can do.

Chapter Text

The air tastes different when one wakes up on their own. It’s sweeter, easier, kinder than it is when an alarm clock pulls you from your sleep. Jon has nearly forgotten this, by now, but it all comes rushing back to him when he does wake. Despite the lingering soreness in his limbs, he stretches just a bit and finds that not much of the pain survived his sleep. He hears a little groan escape his throat, which, though sore, is doing as it’s asked. He even finds he can turn over in bed to look at the clock on his nightstand, a feat he couldn’t have accomplished when he went to sleep if he’d wanted to.

10:30 a.m. Panic rises in his throat. I’m late. Damn it, why didn’t I set my alarm? 

That’s when yesterday returns to him, coming in waves. The blinding pain. That growling. Martin. Tea. Martin. Sleep. 

He tries to stand, and immediately regrets it. The pain was milder when he was lying down, but now that he’s using his legs properly, they’re not happy about it. Of course there’s a catch, Jon thinks bitterly. But he is going to have to get up sometime. I can deal with this, he tells himself. 

A deep breath and a very painful attempt at walking later, Jon staggers into the living room. 

There is, for some reason, a dog on his sofa, which Jon finds moderately less jarring than the sight of his assistant asleep, with his head lying on said dog. 

Jon leans against the wall, just watching. Of course, it makes sense for Martin to still be here, and for all he knows the dog is just Saffron in a different shape. The golden sheen to its fur seems to confirm that. But there’s something… different about Martin, when he’s asleep. He’s relaxed completely, and Jon is only realizing now that he’s never seen him that way before. There’s this quality to him that’s like light passing between the blinds, easy and soft like the dappled glow on the floor. 

He almost doesn’t want to say anything. After all he’s put Martin through, he should let him have this. He can take care of himself.

He goes for the electric kettle first, flipping the switch to turn it on. Maybe I can make him a cup of tea, convince him I’m alright… or does that constitute a gift? Jon has been wary of doing much of anything for Martin for a while now. Hell, he’s even scared of opening doors for him. He’s felt like an ass, but he doesn’t want to accidentally put Martin back in debts that can hurt him. In the end, he only gets out one mug.

He doesn’t notice the tremor in his hands until he tries to hold it. His wrists seem to have been replaced with gelatin, and even his fingers are sore. Still, he makes it to the counter, puts his tea bag in the mug, and picks up the kettle. He’s holding steady, managing to keep the water going in the mug, until finally his hand shakes a bit too hard and the hand he’s holding the mug with is met with boiling hot water. He hisses and feels a small cry escape his throat.

Martin wakes. Damn. Jon’s stomach drops. He heads over to the sink to try and run the burn under cold water. 

He had hoped Martin would see nothing wrong and just go back to sleep. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Martin’s on his feet faster than Jon thinks should be possible. 

“Jon? Are you okay? What are you doing up?”

Jon keeps his gaze firmly on his hand. It’s going to blister. “I’m fine. You can- you can go back to sleep, Martin.”

But Martin’s no fool. He scans the scene. “Did you burn yourself?”

Jon bites his lip. “I was trying to make tea. I’ll be fine; I’ve burned myself before.”

Martin puts a hand on his shoulder. The touch is tentative but firm, the same way a person would hold a thin porcelain figurine that will break if they drop it or hold it too tightly. “Let me see it.”

Reluctantly, Jon turns around. Martin cups his hand, examining the damage. “This might feel a bit odd,” he warns. 

“Martin- you really don’t have to--”

Jon is cut off by Martin’s singing:

“He never stole, 

He never slew

He never murdered any

He never injured any of you,

So spare me the life of my Geordie.”

The tingling pain on top of his hand begins to fade, but is replaced by a severe itch that causes Jon’s hand to tense. At the same time, the little stone of guilt in his stomach rises to his throat until all of a sudden, it’s gone. Martin’s hand lingers underneath his own, the little space between them buzzing with something Jon wants to think is just Martin’s spellwork. They stand there for a moment.

“It’s okay to need help, Jon,” Martin finally says. He doesn’t say it in that pitying way Jon always heard from his teachers when they saw the burns on his hands, nor in the scolding way Elias had. “The world couldn’t work if everyone tried to go it alone.” The reminder is gentle, and Martin half-whispers it. Jon searches for eye contact, but Martin doesn’t dare until he drops Jon’s hand. 

Jon searches for the right words. “Thank you, Martin,” he says at last. He feels his heart tying itself in knots, like a lone sailor trying to save a galleon from sinking in a storm. There’s no reason for this, he remarks to himself; Martin has just fixed his hand. 

He turns his attention to the water on the counter. As quickly as he can manage, he tries to go for a kitchen towel. Before he can clean up the mess, though, Martin stops him. Jon is intensely aware of the hand on his wrist. The eye contact he’s been looking for earlier has returned, and Martin’s eyes are full of concern. “You can thank me by sitting down and letting me clean this up. We still don’t know what really happened to you, and I’d rather you not be in the kitchen if you start seizing again.”

Jon tilts his head to one side. He’s not used to this from Martin. He opens his mouth to argue, but closes it again. Feeling rather conflicted and more than a little helpless, Jon makes his way over to the sofa, where the dog is still napping.

“Martin,” he asks after a moment. 

Martin looks up from the counter. “Yes?”

“This is Saffron, right?”

Martin chuckles. “Yes, it’s Saffron. They like to sleep as bigger animals where they can- something about it being less claustrophobic.”

Jon nods. “Ah.” 

Martin, having finished with Jon’s failed attempt at making tea, puts the kettle back on. “Feeling like trying to eat breakfast?”

It isn’t until Martin asks that Jon notices how hungry he is. He nods, and tries to stand up. He never keeps much food in the house, but he figures he can probably get away with toast.

“Nope!” Martin exclaims, wagging a finger at him. “Absolutely not. You can’t make tea without burning yourself yet, and don’t think for a second I didn’t notice that tremor when I fixed the burn. Once we’ve got this business figured out, then maybe you can cook. I’ll make you something”

This is getting ridiculous. “Martin, I’m a grown man. I can deal with a kitchen burn.”

Martin nods. “That’s true, but if you start seizing and run into the stove--”

Jon feels anger bubbling up in his chest. “Martin, I don’t need--”

“Jon.” Martin’s voice is quiet, serious. “Just sit down. Please. Think of it like- like you’re doing me a favor here. It’s my job to take care of you right now. All you’d be doing is making that easier.”

Jon takes a breath. “That’s the problem. It’s not your job. Your job is helping to get the Archives functional again. And I- I’ve made that impossible. Because you’re here, looking after me, and for what? For all I know--”

“Stop.” Martin’s voice isn’t harsh. He makes his way over to Jon and places both hands on his shoulders. This time, Jon’s the one who will do anything not to make eye contact. “I’m a witch. A healer. Sure, I work at the Archives. But this… this is my job. Helping people. And even if it weren’t, I- I’d still be here.”

Jon lets out a harsh laugh. “Why?”

“Because…” Martin sighs. “Because I care about you, okay?”

Martin pulls Jon into a hug. At first, Jon tenses. It feels… odd. He should find this wildly inappropriate. He should have found it inappropriate when Martin broke into his flat. But Martin potentially saved his life by doing wildly inappropriate things. So Jon wraps his arms around Martin, tentatively laying his head against the taller man’s shoulder. “I care about you too.”

He hears the desperate reciprocation in his own voice, and Jon isn’t sure he’s ever meant something more. 

Chapter Text

As Martin watches the pizza from last night begin to reheat in the oven (Jon’s microwave looks like it will explode if he so much as touches the thing) he tries not to think too hard about how it felt to hold Jon. He tries not to think about the way Jon’s thin frame felt like it would crack if he held on too tightly. He tries not to think about the softness of the skin on Jon’s neck, or the pitted and scarred skin of his cheek, or the way his hair fell over Martin’s shoulder, or the fact that when Jon finally hugged him back it had felt like all the world had been set right.... It’s not right, these things. Martin feels as if he’s stealing something precious from Jon without his knowledge by allowing himself to ruminate on them. It feels like a violation. Jon is his boss, and Jon is vulnerable right now. Martin kicks himself for initiating the hug, but what else was there to do? He did care about him. That was true. But was it dishonest to leave it there? No, Jon would have just felt bad, and--

This isn’t the time. Not now. Later, when Jon’s better, he can tackle this. But Jon won’t be better until Martin gets off his arse and actually does some digging into what’s going on with him.

The pizza still has a bit to warm up properly. The oven’s less of a hazard than the microwave, but it still takes forever to actually heat up, so Martin makes tea for himself and Jon. He makes a point not to notice how graceful Jon’s hands are when he carefully takes the cup, despite their shaking. He also makes a point not to notice how soft and sincere his voice is when he says “thank you.”

Instead of noticing these things, he nudges Saffron awake. The dog opens their eyes, shaking themselves all over, and hops off the sofa to sit on the floor next to the coffee table. 

Martin leans against the arm of the sofa, trying to create some distance. He’s got to be able to concentrate. 

“So, I think we both know that this… isn’t a normal illness,” he starts. 

Jon nods. 

“It’s definitely of magical origin, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. It’s got a distinct Fae bent to it, though. Can you remember anything that might have caused… well…”

“The seizure?” Jon laughs bitterly. His gaze becomes almost imperceptibly more distant, and he places his tea on the coffee table. Martin notices his hand is shaking just a little more violently than before. 

He nods. “If you’re not ready to talk about it yet--”

Jon shakes his head. “No, it’s… fine. It’s going to have to happen eventually.” He sighs and leans back into the sofa. “How much do you need to know?”

“Only as much as you’re comfortable telling me, but… well, I don’t want you to feel pressured, but the more information I have…”

Jon nods. “Alright.” He crosses his legs like a child, making himself small. Martin wants to reach out, to calm him, but- no. He’d be a fool to think his motives were pure. Jon begins: “Back when you went missing for two weeks, when we thought you were sick, Elias came into my office. He said… he said he was Fae. Proper Fae, not- not whatever I am. He said he could help me… help me learn more about my heritage, take me to meet other Fae.” Jon is speaking slowly, like he’s afraid if he says the wrong thing, the words will fly back into his face and attack him. “He said he could help me ‘integrate’ into Fae society by… marrying me.”

Martin feels a lump rising in his throat, and at the same time, a pang of jealousy. “What?”

Jon shakes his head. “You heard me the first time. Of course, then you came in with that tin of worms and we had more pressing matters on our hands. I never gave him an answer.

Then, when you went to go get spell ingredients to help with my nausea issues, Elias came back. He tried to give me a necklace that time, and asked me if I’d… if I’d given it anymore thought. I said no, and… he was angry for a moment, but he got up and made us both tea. I didn’t… I didn’t see him put anything in it.” Jon is breathing a little more quickly now, and he’s picking at the skin around his fingers. “I didn’t see him put anything in it.” Jon’s voice is cracking, despite his obvious attempts to keep it level.

Poison, Martin realizes. Oh, gods, he thinks it’s his fault, too. At this, Martin does move closer to Jon, placing a hand over Jon’s hands.

“It’s okay, Jon. It’s not your fault. Come here.” He pulls Jon into his arms, letting the smaller man bury his face in his shoulder. 

Jon pulls away after a few moments, still shaking. “Thanks. I…”

Martin nods. “It’s okay,” he says. It is most definitely not okay, but not because of anything Jon has done. Elias is definitely the one at fault here. Jon had been ill when Elias had come to speak to him, and putting aside how inappropriate it was for him to propose to Jon in the first place, his pressing the issue just made it worse. Martin swallows his fury so as not to make Jon more nervous than he already is.

Saffron pads over to Jon, nuzzling his leg. They can be very good at acting like a dog sometimes. It’s no wonder it’s their favorite form. I don’t think it’s poison, they say to Martin.

“I don’t see what else it could be,” Martin replies. “Elias gave him the tea and he had a seizure right after. Seems like poison to me. And it seems like it’s starting to wear off.”

Jon throws a quizzical glance at Saffron, and back to Martin. 

“Sorry,” Martin says. “Saffron says they’re not sure if it’s poison.”

Jon nods. “I see. But what else could it be?”

Martin shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Saffron shakes their head. It feels like a curse to me, possibly one that’s been attached to him for a while.

Martin looks to Jon. “Do you know anything about a curse you might have had? Something hereditary, maybe?”

Jon shakes his head. “There shouldn’t be anything like that.”

Martin nods. “I think it’s settled then. I’ll try and work out how to treat the poison, help get it out of your system.”

You should leave the iron up, just in case, Saffron warns. Martin nods, though he isn’t sure what the point would be. Saffron seems to know this, and their swirling gold irises bore into him with a mixture of concern and frustration.

The timer on the oven beeps, breaking the tension.

Martin stays with Jon another two nights. In that time, Jon’s health seems to be improving, and Martin’s anger at Elias continues to simmer. He considers going to confront him, but realizes quickly that he could meet the same fate as Jon, if not worse. He’s read the stories of people that run afoul of the Fae, and he knows trying to fight one is the easiest way to get himself killed. He can’t afford that.

After the third night, Jon seems to be doing well enough to be left alone. Martin asks if he thinks he’ll be alright, and Jon says yes. 

Saffron isn’t too keen on leaving, though. As Martin’s gathering his phone and keys, Saffron paces about the flat in the form of a cat. I don’t think we should leave him alone, they tell Martin.

“He’ll be fine,” Martin replies. “Whatever Elias gave him is out of his system now, and as long as he takes it easy for the next couple of days--”

It’s not that simple. There’s something else there, I know it. 

Martin steps out into the corridor and Saffron follows, albeit reluctantly. “He said he feels fine.”

You and I both know that’s not how curses work.

“Why are you so sure it’s a curse? How would Elias even get control of a curse like that?”

I don’t know. The Fae aren’t allowed to take each other’s names, but if he’s willing to poison Jon--

“And you think a curse that nasty would just lie dormant until Jon drank Elias’s tea?”

I don’t know. 

“Exactly,” Martin says as the two start down the stairs. 

Don’t take that tone with me, Martin.

Martin laughs. “Are you serious? Are you my familiar or my mum?”

Saffron doesn’t waver. This is supposed to be a relationship founded on mutual respect.

“Then why won’t you respect that I do know what I’m doing sometimes?” Martin snaps. He regrets it very quickly, though, when he sees the darkness that fills Saffron’s eyes. He sighs. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

A feeling of warmth washes over him from Saffron. It’s okay. I think we’re both very tired. Maybe we should get some rest.

Martin nods. He hasn’t slept well in days. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

Chapter Text

Even though Jon feels better in the following days, he considers simply refusing to go back to work. The thought of facing Elias again, the thought of even returning to that place, it causes every muscle in his body to lock up. He can’t do it. But something in him, something uninvited and altogether different from what he thinks himself to be… it urges him to return. It’s like the Archive has tied a string around his windpipe and is pulling at it. Come back, it whispers, and you’ll be able to really breathe again.

Jon does his level best to shake it off for a while. He calls Tim, says he won’t be coming in and to email him about anything odd that comes up. Tries to call Sasha, who doesn’t pick up the phone. Martin has told him he needs to take it easy between doses of magical tea, and a trek to work to investigate… whatever it is that needs investigating isn’t exactly heeding Martin’s words. The Archive doesn’t relent, though. In his dreams, he sees Gertrude Robinson’s body, the bullet holes in it, the tapes surrounding her lifeless body.

And those tapes, they unravel. They twist and coil like cobwebs. They reach for him, lashing out for his wrists and ankles. Sometimes, Gertrude stands. Her bones shift and her joints pop in all the wrong directions, and on those nights Jon wakes up in a cold sweat before drifting back off into an uneasy slumber.

Other nights are not so easy. Jon isn’t sure what happens those nights. All he knows is he wakes up halfway through a strangled “no.” There is a burning sensation around the base of his neck, and the scents of rosemary and musk linger at the edges of his perception. He sometimes feels a pair of wiry phantom hands releasing their grip on his wrist and hair. These nights, he can’t get back to sleep. That string around his windpipe grows tighter. The walls of his flat grow closer together. He has to leave. 

Jon can’t fight this forever. After a particularly vivid experience of the latter nightmare, Jon fumbles with the buttons of his work shirt, trying desperately to get it on. Those hands, which normally let go when he awakes, seem to still have a firm grip on him, and his own hands are trembling as he tries to lace up his shoes. Eventually, he gives up. He throws his coat over his shoulders and trips down the stairs of his building, followed by a cloud of rosemary and musk. The whole of his mind is being pushed, held to the singular goal of reaching the Archive before daylight despite his assistant’s careful warnings and--

The Archivist stops dead in the middle of the pavement. The hands let go. The scent dissipates. Martin. Martin told him to take it easy, to rest. Martin cares about him. Martin cares about him. And if he knew what Jon was doing now, God only knows how worried he’d be. He doesn’t have to be the Archivist right now. All he has to do is get better. Jon looks down at his body, examining it all slowly with a combination of detached curiosity and childlike fear.

Something wants him to go to the Archive, and whatever it is, it’s pretty damn strong.

He doesn’t have to listen to it, though. Right?

The next morning, Jon debates giving Martin a call. He’s decided after a cup of tea and a decent breakfast that it was just a sleepwalking episode. He’d had those before as a child, though he does admit to himself that he hadn’t remembered the actual act of walking. On the one hand, it could be a previously latent side effect of whatever Elias had given him. On the other, it could just be a fluke. A one-off. And if that’s true, well, there’s really no point worrying Martin, is there?

So Jon doesn’t make the call. He figures he’ll be alright. 

But it happens again the next night. This time, the Archivist gets all the way to the street the Institute sits on before he becomes lucid, and his muscles take on an ache that feels like a shadow of the pain he’d experienced right after Elias had poisoned him.

Alright, he tells himself. Maybe it’s worse than I thought. But for all I know, it’s just a stress response. Besides, it’s only happened twice. If it happens again, I’ll call him, but it hasn’t put me in any real danger yet.

Despite his most concerted efforts to brush these incidents off, Jon still feels the need to take precautions the next night. He puts his shoes under the sofa rather than in their usual place by the door, places his keys in the freezer, and locks both his bedroom and apartment door. He’s not quite sure how much good this will do, but it’s definitely better than nothing at all, and when he drifts off he almost feels safe.

His sleep that night is blessedly dreamless. His breathing is slow, just as it should be, and he feels his heart beat steadily and slowly. Finally, a good night’s sleep. As Jon awakes, a sense of relief washed over him at the revelation that he doesn’t need to worry Martin after all.

At least, he’s relieved until he sees his surroundings. It’s dark, wherever he is, and the floor feels like an odd mixture of dusty cobblestone and plain old dirt. It’s cold here, even though he’s fully dressed. Panic fills him from his toes to his eyes, and he shuts his eyes again, praying this is just another variety of nightmare. 

It isn’t.

He’s not sure what to do. He’s been through plenty of emergency training. He knows how to administer CPR, put out a fire, help evacuate an aeroplane when it crashes, but this? Jon is useless here. He’s got no idea where he is, he doesn’t feel his phone in his pocket, and even if he did he isn’t certain it would get any kind of reception. 

He takes a moment to think. Light. I need light. That’s easy enough, and he feels the familiar warmth of his freckles beginning to glow.

Jon recognizes this place now. It’s the tunnels underneath the Institute, complete with several worm carcasses the decontamination teams missed in their sweep of the area. Jon heaves a sigh of relief. At least now he knows where he is, and he starts in the direction he’s pretty sure leads back to the wall in document storage.

He’s not walking for long when the pain starts. It begins as it had before, radiating from his gut to his extremities and causing all his muscles to tense. He lets out a small cry, but he’s determined to push on. He’s got to get home, call Martin, ask for help. If he falls here, there’s no guarantee anyone will find him. He focuses on placing one shaking foot in front of the other, keeping his knees from buckling by sheer force of will. 

The light from his freckles flickers and dots begin to blur his vision. No. Keep going. He can see where the wall to document storage had been smashed in, he can see where the metal paneling had been installed as a temporary fix until they could get the wall repaired properly. He’s not wearing a watch, and he’s not sure he could read it if he were, but maybe Martin-- Oh, God, the growling’s back. That grating noise seems to scrape away at his skull and Jon’s heart sinks.

He tries to scream for help. He’s got to get someone’s attention eventually. He pulls in ragged breaths, tries to push out some sound from his strained vocal chords despite the fact that his lungs feel like they’re filling with sand. “Martin!” he rasps at the top of whatever remains of his lungs. “Martin!”

Even if Jon has time to hear his own cries echo back to him before he collapses, his eardrums wouldn’t take it. That growling has filled his ears, the space behind his eyes and the rest of his body all the way down to his feet.

It’s just like last time.

Only now, there’s no way for anyone to find him.

Chapter Text

It’s probably for the best, Martin decides when Saffron says they need to go for a while. They’ve been arguing more lately than they ever have, and Saffron hasn’t been spending enough time with other familiars in their realm to properly recharge. They’ll come back after a week, they tell him. They’re not leaving forever, and they assure him there are no hard feelings.

That doesn’t stop a sense of unease from churning inside Martin’s stomach, though.  He watches as the cat curled up in front of him disappears, feeling like perhaps it’s some sort of punctuation on a statement he hasn’t heard. He can still do his craft; many witches use magic without the help of a familiar at all. Perhaps, he thinks, it will be better for him.

Tim and Sasha are back at the Archives, which helps Martin stave off the loneliness for a while. He explains that Jon is ill, and badly so; he leaves out the bit where he stayed at Jon’s flat for the better part of a week. He’d just as soon have them believe Jon had gone to hospital. They take his word for it, and continue with the clerical work they usually do when Jon is indisposed. They joke about this, about all the times Jon has spontaneously gone missing, been injured, been caught breaking and entering. Martin laughs, but knows they are only able to joke like this because he’s lied.

Of course, he reckons, he has a good reason not to tell them the truth about what happened to Jon. Elias has done nothing to either of them; he’s seemed so far not to take any notice of any of the Archival assistants. Martin isn’t sure how long this will last, of course, but he can’t risk Tim’s moral compass or Sasha’s kind heart putting them all in danger from whatever Elias would do when backed into a corner. It’s not worth it. Even though they have every right to know.

Martin does wonder about Elias, though. Without Saffron, Martin is as unprotected as he’s ever been, and he knows Elias has a tendency for… finding out things he shouldn’t. He'd done it with the cake on Jon's birthday, he'd done it with Martin's mum when she'd first gone to the care home. Each day that passes sees Martin’s anxiety growing, expanding until there’s room for little else. What will Elias do when he learns that Martin saved Jon’s life? Or (and this worries him distinctly more) Will Jon try to confront him about the poisoning?

There’s nothing Elias can do to hurt Martin with magic, Martin reminds himself, and he’s not exactly a physical threat. The Fae are born from magic, and witches work with it. To curse Martin, to harm him using magic in any way would be akin to someone stabbing their mother’s best friend in the heart with her own kitchen knife. Magic, being more of a force than a presence, is often undiscriminating, but it does not forgive slights of such magnitude. And as for Jon, he left him safe at home. The iron charms Martin had hung around the flat and the tea he had filled Jon with had left him a walking fortress, an Achilles if he wore armor on his heel. 

Martin considers going to visit him, but he’s afraid to draw suspicion. If Elias sees him go to Jon’s flat after Jon should be dead, he might catch on and try to find another way to hurt them. No, the best thing he can do is trust Jon to know to keep a low profile. 

The police also come asking after Jon, and Martin thanks the gods he wasn’t there for that. Tim and Sasha he could lie to, but the police? He can see himself as if it had actually happened, folding and telling them everything.

It’s this insanity that follows Martin during this time; this obsession with keeping his story airtight so Elias has no chance of hurting Jon again. He keeps his routine, passing lonely nights alone without the sound of Saffron’s breathing or Jon’s presence in the other room. Sleep comes to him less and less easily, and after three nights Martin takes to wandering the Archives alone. He doesn’t want to use magic on himself; without Saffron’s help it rarely ever works.

They are eerie, he can’t deny that. This feeling that he isn’t as alone as he thinks crawls down the back of his neck like an insect, with a touch that is at once light and terrifying. There isn’t much to see down here, only vast rows of shelves and tapes and so many loose papers. Martin hopes perhaps he’ll get tired enough after an hour or so to get some rest, but no such luck.

But when he sees the fog roll down the staircase, Martin figures he should probably make a potion for himself. It might not be perfect, but hopefully it will do the trick. If he’s hallucinating, it’s definitely worth a shot. But something about this fog, to Martin’s wakeful and addled mind, is comforting. The coolness of it seems to wrap around him like a shroud or a grave, hiding him from the gaze of whatever else might be hiding in the nooks and crannies of the Archives. It feels like walks on rainy afternoons down quiet streets, like looking in at the warmth of the flats above and knowing there is no one inside them who sees you, and better yet that no one cares to. He’ll stay a while, he thinks.

Then the fog grows agitated. Martin watches, rapt, expectant. There is someone in this fog; he can sense that. This is not a fog meant to conceal two people at once, and it isn’t happy to be doing so. 

Martin doesn’t have to wonder long who the source of this agitation might be. The fog parts after only a moment, revealing the other occupant of its damp embrace. The man is tall, taller even than Martin, and nearly as broad. He’s wearing an old woolen pea coat, which at one point might have passed for navy blue but now carries so much age and grime it might as well be black. His sweater, too, is discolored, the cable knit resembling a wedding dress left for years in a closet before being discarded. The only thing untouched by such age seems to be the man himself, whose voluminous beard has gone pale grey but whose face is unperturbed by the passage of time. There is something inside Martin that bristles. It isn’t right for anyone to look like that. It isn’t natural. But as Martin breathes in the fog, he finds he cares less and less. 

“Hello, Martin,” says the man cheerily. “I heard you might be in need of some assistance.” 

He’s so merry, so sure of himself, this man. But he looks on Martin with a kind of condescension, almost disdain. He doesn’t like this, he doesn’t seem to like it any more than the fog he brought with him does. 

“What’s your name?” Martin asks dumbly. It’s all he can think to ask. His mind is… duller here. Disconnected.

“Ah! Where are my manners?” the man says. He holds out his hand for Martin to shake. His grip is firm, his palms so coarse they scratch Martin’s as he lets go. “Peter Lukas. I think you’ll find we get along famously.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lukas.”

Chapter Text

Jon does not expect, as he hits the ground, that he will dream.

Or perhaps, he hopes he will not. Either way, he does. He knows the dream as it comes, rosemary and musk cutting through the pain like the presence of a friend he parted with on bad terms. He sees himself, with a crown of silver antlers, on a dais under the gaze of a thousand unseen eyes. He watches green tattoos flicker to life along his wrists, up his arms, all the way to his throat. Words of power, being chanted from some unseen mouth, deafen him as someone behind him reaches over his head. He is himself now, dizzy, disoriented, reaching up to touch the base of his throat. The silver there is familiar, its twining shape and glistening emeralds as well-known to him as the pits of his own skin. Pale hands, bony and elegant, wrap around his wrists and hold him in place. He knows those hands, and in his dream he remembers how they stirred the tea, how they so nonchalantly cast toward him the choker that now runs rings around his jugular. These hands grip gently at first. Then, suddenly, their grip tightens. It’s in preparation for something, and Jon has very little time to consider what this might be before the choker catches fire. He imagines he might scream, if his voice hadn’t been the first thing to burn away. Elias’s voice hushes him, and through the burning Jon feels his breath hot on the back of his neck. No. No. No!

“No!” he feels the shout die in his throat as he jerks awake. 

He is not where he fell.

He isn’t even in the tunnels, or it doesn’t seem that way at first. He’s in a room, like a den, lying across two three chairs pushed together in a rough approximation of a bed. His neck is at an odd angle, and he figures it would be sore if he weren’t already in too much pain to notice. His vision clears slowly, revealing different details by degrees. 

There is little furniture in this room, but there is a lot of clutter. There’s a bottle of what probably was wine at some point, a rather fancy-looking vintage utterly drained of its contents. A set of clothes lies crumpled on the ground, several wrappers from granola bars and bags of crisps littering the floor next to it. Oddly, Jon notices not a single crumb from any of these foodstuffs remains on the stones. 

Then, there are the books. There is a countless multitude of them here, stacked up against the walls as if to support the ceiling, in all sizes and colors ranging from thin magazines with impossibly shiny covers to tomes several times thicker than Jon’s torso. He drowsily half-laughs at the delight he would have felt, had he run across such a hoard as a child. 

But where there is a library, there is a librarian. Jon notices him now. The man is small, his muscles taut under his shabby tweed suit as he sits on the edge of a rickety card table. His face, whose age Jon cannot begin to guess, is emotionless.

As Jon draws in his first proper breath since he first fell in the tunnels, his mind recognizes that he should be afraid. Where is he? Who is this? What are all these books, and how did this man, whoever he is, find Jon? He tries to stand on instinct, to protect himself from this stranger, but a blinding flash of pain pulls him to the floor.

The man stands, eyeing Jon with a look Jon can’t really place. Irritation? Curiosity?

“Who are you?” Jon chokes. His throat replies as if he’s swallowed a rusty nail. Great. I was just getting over that.

“Jurgen Leitner. I really must insist we dispense with pleasantries, Archivist. Time is of the essence.” The man reaches out a hand and Jon takes it, hesitantly.

“Jurgen Leitner?” Jon’s heard that name before, always in real statements. Ex Altiora. The Key of Solomon. A Disappearance. 

The man nods. “I’m afraid there isn’t much time. I prefer to keep this room moving, but your presence here makes that rather impossible. I imagine you have questions?”

Jon swallows, bracing himself for the pain of speaking. “How did you know where to find me?” he says hoarsely.

Jurgen smiles wryly. “I’m the one who made sure you got here,” he answers. “Of course, I didn’t foresee the… negative effect it would have on you. That really is a nasty curse. If I were you, I never would have given away my name, especially to someone like…. No matter. It was a simple matter, really. All I had to do was redirect the pull the Archive already has with you.”

Jon has more questions than he feels he can pull from his own throat. “Why….” he coughs, pretending for the sake of his own sanity not to see the blood on his sleeve when he pulls it away. “Why ‘The Library of Jurgen Leitner?’”

“Hubris,” Leitner answers simply. “I… thought that I could control them; that I alone had the knowledge to contain them. Back then, I believed they were simply books. Horrifying, powerful, yes, but with rules, limits that could be charted. I was a fool. I had no idea what forces lay behind them, or that they had other servants that might come searching. I was ruthless, I will admit that. I don’t know how many assistants I sacrificed to learn the secrets of the volumes I collected. Dozens, at least. Only a few escaped with their life and mind intact, and even then they were deeply marked. But I was relentless. I saw myself as a guardian, a reverse Pandora, gathering the evils of the world and locking them away. 

And so I branded them with my seal. I told myself that if any should escape, such a mark could help me to retrieve them. But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That “The Library of Jurgen Leitner” would stand as a symbol of courage and protection. I did so want to be a hero.” Leitner laughs. “Alas, there isn’t much hope for that now. Elias… the one you call Elias, anyway, though I’m not sure how accurately he can be called by that name; he will catch up to me very soon. I simply know too much about him from having worked with Gertrude Robinson. I suppose, in a way, this is how I’ve chosen to repay the world.” 

“What do you mean?” Jon asks.

Leitner sighs. “You are familiar with witches, correct? Workers of magic, readers of auguries, that sort?”

Jon nods.

“And you are, I assume, familiar with the Fae?”

Jon nods again. Where is this going?

“Then you know the Fae have a very strict code of law.” Jon does not, in fact, know this, but he doesn’t say so. “They also severely dislike enforcing this code when it involves their own kind. They find it much more amusing to punish humans for rules they break unawares. And they are extremely powerful creatures. Occasionally, certain witches can agree to become… contractors, in exchange for some of this power. We are given certain talismans or abilities we could not craft or gain on our own, and with this ability, we terminate the issue.”

“Like… bounty hunters?”

Leitner chuckles. “Of a sort. The Fae you know as Elias Bouchard has been something of a problem for the queen for quite some time. She contacted myself, as well as your predecessor, and we agreed to help her. This proved, of course, much more difficult than we planned.”

Jon assumes Leitner isn’t talking about the Queen of England. His grandmother had told him precious little about Titania, only that her opinion was the highest court in the lands of the Fae, and she worked closely with some of the darkest forces the world had to offer.

“Gertrude, as you know, did not last long. And I… I am very old. There is enough guilt on my conscience already, and I would prefer not to take a life if it can be avoided.”

Jon pinches the bridge of his nose. “And you think I can do it for you?”

Leitner purses his lips. “I think you would like to see him dead more than I would. He has quite the hold on you. And,” he adds, “even if you can’t stomach murder, you may well expose him to the consequences he deserves.”

Jon hates it, but Leitner is right, at least on some level. He wants Elias to face some form of justice. “I…” he breathes. He can’t say yes. He can’t make a promise. “I don’t know.”

Leitner nods, a gravity coming over his manner that shows Jon’s reticence was not entirely unexpected. “I thought you might say that. No matter. It’s time I sent you somewhere safe. I don’t think you want to run into the man you’re thinking about killing in a state like this.” He laughs. “I don’t think Elias would take too kindly to it either.”

And with a wave of Leitner’s hand, Jon is wrapped in a screaming void before finding himself back in his flat, completely alone. The pain is gone, but Jon isn’t sure he’s any better off.

Can he really kill Elias Bouchard?

Chapter Text

Being a stranger who literally broke into the Archives at all hours of the night, Peter Lukas should not make Martin feel safe. Martin is well aware of this. Of course, that doesn’t mean he treats him with any suspicion. The man had handed him a note last night with the words “Misty Shores Coffee- noon sharp” scrawled on it and disappeared into the thick fog he’d brought with him. Now, Martin studies the note, trying to remember if he knows of a Misty Shores Coffee anywhere in London. Even if he does, what would be the point of going to meet the man, or ghost, or whatever he is? He had done nothing to make Martin trust him; in fact, he had done the opposite. But as Martin runs over the events of the previous night in his head, the more appealing it seems.

Peter had an odd energy about him. It was somewhat like Elias’s, actually, at least in texture. But the colour of it had been different, and Martin hadn’t felt as threatened or invaded by it. Rather, the fog had made Martin feel like a child hiding beneath the covers at night: not quite safe, but hidden enough to be out of danger, to breathe easy knowing he was the only one the fog needed to contain. 

And Jon hasn’t come back to the Archives today. This is probably for the best. He needs the rest, and Martin won’t blame him if he decides never to return at all. Tim and Sasha have been keeping busy with clerical work, which they all know he’s terrible at, and he should be alright to leave a bit earlier than normal. What the hell? Martin tells himself. Whatever Peter Lukas might be up to, he doubts it’ll be worse than what the thing formerly known as Jane had done to him.

From the moment he walks out of the Institute and sets foot on the pavement, Martin finds he doesn’t need directions to the coffeehouse. His feet take him there just like they used to take him to his apartment, back when he had one. He half-remembers the trek when it’s over, almost like a pleasant dream that takes him through shady alleyways and down roads he’s never seen before.

Misty Shores Coffee is a small, squat building in a part of London Martin isn’t familiar with. It’s sandwiched between two apartment buildings, looking almost like an afterthought built into the alley between them. It has two windows on either side of a blue door with chipping paint, both of which seem to sag toward the centre of the building. The walls, unlike the brick around them, are made of sheet metal like the kind Martin had seen on his neighbors’ sheds as a child. It’s painted grey and thoroughly rusted. It’s a wonder, Martin remarks, that the building isn’t condemned. Then again, he’s lived in places that were in worse shape than this.

He places his hand on the door’s handle- it’s curved and ornate, shining like it’s just been installed and doesn’t fit the rest of the building at all- and pushes it open.

The scent of coffee hits him like a sack of bricks. The inside of the coffeehouse is a lot nicer-looking than the outside, with pristine white walls and a glossy black granite bar. All the tables and chairs look comfortable enough, with their cushions upholstered in a deep blue satin embroidered with silver. There’s something off about the place, though: there’s only one chair at each table. There also doesn’t appear to be anyone here but Martin and the barista, a tired-looking twenty-something who looks thoroughly irritated to see him. There’s a birdcage in the corner as well, occupied by a small grey songbird.

What is he even doing here? This is a terrible idea. His intuition alone has told him that from the beginning; why didn’t he listen to it? Gods, he can only imagine what Saffron would say. Can he even make it back to the Archives? He knew the way here, but there’s no telling if he could make it back without--

“Hello, Martin!” crows a voice from a back table. Martin snaps out of his reverie to see Peter Lukas, having pulled another chair up to one of the tables, beckoning him to sit. No going back now, he supposes. 

“Mr. Lukas?” Martin says hesitantly, taking his place at the glossy black table.

“Peter, please.” The older man grins in a way Martin would call conspiratorial if it weren’t for the coldness behind it. He shifts in his seat, taking off that old peacoat and draping it carefully over the back of the chair. “Lovely to meet you.”

Martin nods. “You too,” he stammers. 

“Shall we have some coffee then?” Lukas – Peter – suggests. Without waiting for Martin’s response, he calls to the barista, “Denzal, if you could start a cappuccino for myself and something for my guest here, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

Both the barista, Denzal, and Peter are now looking at him expectantly, so he just fires off the first coffee drink that comes to mind. “I’ll have an americano, thanks.” He’s not entirely sure what he’s just ordered, but it gets a nod of approval from Denzal.

“It’s been rather busy here today,” Peter remarks. “I’d have scheduled someone to help them, but Denzal is making such wonderful progress, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.”

“At least things seemed to have calmed down,” Martin remarks.

Peter chuckles. “Ah, I’d forgotten you couldn’t see them. That’s the trouble with illusions like this; they’re hard to individualize. Rather ironic, if you think about it.” He waves a hand toward the other tables. As he does, Martin sees several people, some poring over notebooks or heavy tomes, others simply curled up in their chairs nursing cups of coffee, and still others doing absolutely nothing at all. “I had to give my… students a sort of haven, you see, but I can’t have them congregating.”

Martin feels he has missed several key points here. “Students?”

Peter sighs. “I guess it would be best to start from the beginning.”

Just then, Denzal approaches and places the two coffees on the table. “Anything else, Peter?” they ask.

“No, we’re good here. Thank you, Denzal.”

Martin examines the coffee. He’s not really sure what’s in it, but it does just look like black coffee. Maybe that’s what it is. He takes a sip and tries not to make a face when the bitterness hits him, covering it up with a question. “You were saying?”

Peter chuckles. “Ah, right. My students.” He takes a sip of his cappuccino, then continues. “You are a witch, yes?” 

Martin nods, though he isn’t sure how Peter knows this. 

“And you have a familiar?”

Martin nods again. “Saffron.”

Peter half-smiles at that. “Not a bad name. In any case, you know, then, that working with a familiar involves a sort of soul-bond?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Exactly. And you know that a witch’s ability to control magic is the responsibility of the soul?”

“Yes.” Where is this going?

“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Martin.” Peter lowers his voice dramatically. “Having a familiar actually makes you rather weak.”

“What?” In all Martin’s years of magical training, he’s never heard that before. If anything, he was taught the opposite; with two souls to hold the magic in place, any spell would be strengthened. Familiars are there to guide, as well; they’re older than witches by centuries and their wisdom is invaluable.

“I know what you’ve been taught. But I’m assuming you also know the limitations of magic? That it can’t create from nothing, it can’t revive the dead, et cetera?”

“Are you saying it can?” Martin’s eyes widen.

“Without a familiar, it can. You see, there are certain limitations that come with sharing power between two souls. I find that rather than the souls working as one to guide the spell, the strength of both is diluted. But with just one, uninfluenced by any other…” Peter grins. “How about I just show you?” With that, Peter strides over to the birdcage and removes the songbird. The little thing blinks at being picked up, but doesn’t fidget. It seems to look at Martin as it chirps a merry little tune. “You might want to look away, Martin. I’m afraid this is the hard part.”

But before Martin can close his eyes or even process what’s been said, Peter takes hold of the bird’s head and wrenches it deftly to one side with a crack. 

“What the hell?” Martin hears himself ask, incredulously. 

Peter sighs. “Calm down, Martin. Denzal, if you would?” 

Denzal looks up from the mug they’re scrubbing and nods. They emerge from behind the bar and take the bird from Peter as if they’ve done this a thousand times, cupping their hands around it and closing their eyes. The same fog that had surrounded Peter last night now pours from Denzal’s open mouth, surrounding the bird briefly before dissipating.

The bird, whose head had before been facing entirely the wrong direction, is now just as it was before. Denzal hands the bird back to Peter, who offers it to Martin. It looks up at him curiously. Martin takes it in his hands, feeling its little feathered chest rise and fall between his palms. He can’t help but imagine what he might be able to do, who he could help, with power like this.

Peter levels his gaze at Martin’s eyes. “I was… pointed in your direction by a certain friend of mine. He knows you, and knows you value the healing arts. I can teach you to do this, if you like. No strings attached. You can leave the moment you feel uncomfortable.”

Martin opens and closes his mouth, unsure what to say. “I guess… I do want to hear a bit more about all this.”

Peter grins at that, thoroughly satisfied. He takes the bird from Martin, returning it to its cage. “Wonderful. Same time next week, then?”

Chapter Text

Against his better judgement, Jon does not turn off his alarm today. Against his better judgement, he rolls out of bed and places his feet on the floor. Against his better judgement, he dresses himself in the work clothes he hasn’t worn in nearly two weeks.

Against his better judgement, Jon will go back to the Archives today.

He just hopes Martin will be there in case things go wrong.

He has, of course, considered quitting. The bin next to his desk is brimming with scrapped resignation letters, with even more scattered across his desk and on the floor. But the thought of taking one to Elias’s office, the thought of even approaching Rosie with it, scares him more than going back. He would be without income, and, he feels, equally without purpose. And if Elias would poison him over a rejection of his romantic advances, well… he doesn’t want to know what could happen to him if he tried to leave completely. 

And if he does quit, he’ll lose his only shot at learning more about Jurgen Leitner. That is a not-insignificant reason for his staying on as Head Archivist. He’s been racking his brain for days since that incident, trying to figure out what it is that Elias could have done to make the Fae so angry. He’s sure Leitner will be able to tell him, but if Elias has got to him already, he could be facing down a dead end, and what will he do then?

He expects his commute to work to be stressful or tense, and is unsettled and surprised when it is not. He is afraid for his life; there can be no doubt about that. He finds, though, that the closer he gets to the Archives, the calmer he feels. When he stepped out of his flat earlier he felt a throbbing echo of the pain that had racked his body before, but it’s subsiding with every step he takes and he finds he’s more at peace than he’s ever been. He has a sense that this is what he is meant to be doing, that this is the wisest decision he could make, and, most importantly, that he will get the answers he seeks. His shoulders tense when he arrives, but not in fear. It’s in anticipation. He opens the door to the Magnus Institute with something akin to reverence: quietly, slowly. 

It is only as he sits down in his office that he realizes something is wrong with that.

No sooner has he opened his laptop than lucidity passes over him like the eyewall of a hurricane, and that lucidity is rapidly replaced by blind panic. He’s got to leave, to go hide somewhere, and he finds himself running at a dead sprint toward Document Storage. He passes Tim on the way, who tries to speak with him, but he doesn’t respond. There’s no time. Something is watching him. Something that’s very, very close.

This mad dash takes him running, headfirst, into someone.

He falls to the floor, gathers himself, looks up.

Polished black Oxfords. Black trousers, pinstriped, satin finish. Matching jacket. Emerald pocket square. Elias Bouchard stretches out a hand, and Jon tries to escape in a desperate backwards crabwalk. 

“Jon? Is everything alright? I had heard you were back in; I just came to say hello.”

“Get the hell away from me,” Jon spits. 

Elias raises his hands in surrender, and to Jon’s surprise, doesn’t pursue him. “I understand you’ve not been well, Jon; don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.”

Jon laughs harshly as he stands, knees weak and trembling. “Won’t hurt me? You poisoned me!” he half-shouts. Bile rises in his throat like sandpaper against his larynx. He knew he would have to face Elias, but now? Here? So soon? He’s not ready. Does Elias know about Jurgen? The tunnels? He does; he must. Those eyes, those watery grey things, Jon gets the sense they know far more than he’s letting on. It’s wrong. All of it.

“What?” Elias raises his eyebrows in alarm, an alarm that seems altogether genuine despite the plain truth of the matter. 

Hot anger drips venomous from Jon’s lips. “You proposed to me in the break room and I said no and you poisoned me. You offered to make tea and you put something in my cup and the next thing I knew I collapsed in my flat in excruciating pain. You poisoned me. ” He balls up his fists. Christ, part of him could beat Elias senseless now. Not necessarily for the poisoning, either; it’s mostly just for that oh-so-innocent act he’s putting on when Jon knows he knows exactly what he’s talking about. Elias, seeing this, approaches with the caution of a shelter volunteer approaching a feral cat.

“Jon,” he says. “I understand why you might think that. But I can assure you, I did not poison you.” His tone is perfectly level, his hands still raised to his shoulders. Jon watches him, waiting for any sign of a lie.

He finds none.

Elias is telling the truth.

“That’s not possible.”

Slowly, carefully, Elias places a hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Why don’t we go outside and have a walk, hm?” Jon is not being patronized, he knows that. It seems Elias actually means to give him a choice in this matter. “We can talk about this in public, like sensible people, and you can get some fresh air you clearly need.”

Jon swallows the lump in his throat. “Sure.”

The courtyard of the Magnus Institute is large, and a very popular place to have lunch in the spring. Jon doesn’t often come up here, of course; he usually tries to eat lunch quickly and a trip up to the courtyard would likely cost him precious minutes he could use to work. Elias opens the door for him when they arrive, ever the gentleman, and the two make their way down a circular path made of shimmering paving stones. The air is chilly, what with it being February in London, but as it goes it’s still unseasonably warm. Jon takes a deep breath. The fresh air seems to brace his trembling limbs.

“Are you feeling better?” Elias asks, softly.

Jon nods. “Yes. A bit.”

Elias nods. “Good. I’m glad.” He seems to mean that. “Tim has told me you were out because of an illness. I believe he said Martin had asked him to pass that along. There was no mention of poisoning, though,” he says. “Please explain what you think happened. I’d like to understand.”

Jon takes a breath. He sees no reason to withhold the truth. He’s already shouted his suspicions at the top of his lungs. Besides, they’re in a courtyard equipped with plenty of CCTV cameras. Anything Elias might do to him would be recorded on those. “When I rejected your… advances, you offered to make us both tea. I saw you make the tea, but your tattoos glowed while you were stirring in the sugar. I thought it might be a trick of the light, or that it could be because I wasn’t feeling well, but then… then I went home and had some sort of seizure. I was in extreme pain for a long time. That’s when Martin came to check on me, and…” Jon tries to think of a way to phrase what happened. “He was able to help. I stayed home for a few days to recover.”

Elias nods. “And you think I used magic to poison you.”

“Yes,” Jon replies coolly, some of his anger returning. 

Elias stops and looks Jon dead in the eyes. “I’m truly sorry, Jon.”

“Sorry?”

“I never meant to poison you. I did, in fact, enchant your tea, but I only did it because you seemed to be feeling very ill. Healing magic is not my strong suit, and it’s very possible the spell might have backfired along the way or reacted negatively to other magic in your system.”

Jon thinks back to the tea Martin had made him earlier that day. Is it possible that two positives could make a negative in this case? Good Lord, he’s too tired for this.

“The truth is, Jon, I do care for you; I care perhaps more than is appropriate for someone in my position. I would never willingly hurt you. I don’t think… if you’ll permit me to say so, Jon, I don’t think I could bear it.”

Jon studies the paving stones and begins to walk again. This is a lot. He’ll have to talk to Martin, talk to Leitner, maybe. This is a side of Elias he’s never seen, and he’s not sure yet whether he can trust it. It seems Elias is telling him the truth, and Jon has a good track record for knowing whether he’s being lied to, but he can never be sure. It doesn’t seem right. But, he considers, what does seem right since the Prentiss attack? Could Elias truly have good intentions? 

“I won’t ask you to forgive me,” Elias says, softly. “All I ask is that you consider that I have your best interests at heart.”

“Right,” Jon replies.

As they turn around to head back inside, Elias places a hand on the small of Jon’s back. The touch is light, and he removes it as quickly as he had placed it there. “I understand I’ve broken your trust, but whenever you’re ready, I’ll be there for whatever you need. Do you understand that?”

Jon doesn’t answer. He doesn’t feel he can, yet.

Chapter Text

Martin has met with Peter twice when Jon comes back to work. At this point, he’s trying very hard not to notice that he’s back. He needs to take a step away. All his fussing over Jon, it isn’t healthy. It’s only making him weaker. That’s what Peter says, at least. And in just these two meetings, he’s more than proven himself to be a powerful witch. In just two meetings, he’s shown Martin things he never dreamed magic could do- conjuring objects out of thin air, reversing the aging process and so many more. In just two meetings, he’s got Martin hook, line and sinker.

Besides, Martin has bigger fish to fry. Saffron is due back today, and they’re about to have a very difficult conversation.

He pretends not to be all that worried, though. He tries to just do his job, go about his day. At least, until lunch.

Jon appears, quiet and catlike as ever, in front of Martin’s desk. Were he not so bent on indifference, Martin would have been touched by the gesture. 

“Martin,” Jon says. “I… I need to talk to you. Somewhere outside the Institute. Do you want to- do you--” he’s stammering badly, clearly on edge.  “Do you want to get lunch? Together?”

“What?”

“Do you want to get lunch, Martin?” Jon repeats, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves.

Oh gods, he really does. But he can’t. His obsession with Jon has to stop, and if that’s going to happen, he has to draw the line somewhere. “I can’t. I’m kind of busy,” he says. The coolness of his tone surprises even him. Has he always done this?

Jon leans in a little closer, still at an arm’s length, but making himself smaller. More vulnerable. “Please. I’ve just talked to Elias and I need your help.”

Martin takes a breath, measures his words. “Jon, you came back to work. I understand that it’s probably very stressful, but you made the choice to come back. It’s not my job to make you feel good about it.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Jon’s tone is desperate. It’s killing Martin to do this, but it’s for the best. He can’t help Jon the way he wants to until he detaches himself from him. He can’t help anyone the way he wants to if he’s relying on them for comfort. When the time is right, he’ll explain everything. For now, he has to make some sacrifices.

“Then what do you mean?” Martin snaps. “If it’s that important, just come right out and say it.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Elias- he might--”

Martin has got to end this conversation.  He won’t be able to keep this up much longer. “He’s not omniscient, Jon. Even if he is Fae, he only has two eyes. And if you’re that scared of him, hand in your resignation. I’ve got work to do.”

The hurt in Jon’s eyes is damn near too much. Martin looks down at the papers on his desk to avoid it, but it stays on his mind like a scalding wax seal. Focus.

“Alright,” Jon says, retreating. “Sorry I disturbed you.” His voice is toneless, and purposefully so. Martin doesn’t look up from his papers until he can’t hear Jon’s footsteps anymore.

When he does look up, Saffron is seated on his desk in the shape of a mouse. That was awfully harsh, don’t you think?” they ask, tilting their head in concern.

“Saffron? When did you get here?”

About five minutes ago. Why were you so harsh with him?

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Saffron tilts their head. Why not? 

“I’ve got a lot going on right now, okay? You missed a lot while you were gone.” It’s hard for Martin to keep the bitterness from creeping into his words. He understood them leaving, but since they’ve been gone he’s felt more and more abandoned.

Do you want some space?

Martin knows he should probably rip the plaster off now. He should just tell Saffron he’s done working with them and get it over with. But their familiar face painted over with concern is too much just now. He’ll do it later, after his meeting with Peter today. That should get him in the right headspace.

“Sure. We can talk later. I’m just… quite stressed at the moment.”

I understand. I’ll be in document storage.

Martin worries at the address paper in his pocket. It should be worn down so far as to be illegible, but nothing about the paper nor the writing on it has changed or faded. Much like everything surrounding Peter Lukas, it is frozen in immortal perfection. Even if the paper were completely worn down, though, he suspects he wouldn’t need it anymore. Misty Shores now feels more like home than his own flat used to, and entering is like sitting down in a lonely cabin just as rain begins to beat down outside. There is a certain edge to the comfort, but nothing like it was at the Archives. Martin, even when Peter is there, does not feel he is being watched. 

The coffee shop is once again empty, except for Denzal. Martin has learned since his last two visits not to greet them. They don’t care much for conversation. This had been a bit odd for Martin, but he hadn’t really realized that until he had left his meeting with Peter that day. Why was Denzal so adamant about not being spoken to?

Before he crosses the threshold, he pauses. Could it be that this place has some sort of narcotic effect? It already has an illusion on it; it wouldn’t be hard to… no. Peter has never tried to undermine Martin’s agency like that. Why would he start now? Decisively, like a child jumping into a swimming pool, Martin places his foot in the door.

“Oh, hello, Martin!” Peter exclaims from their usual table in the back. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d show up a third time. It’s a good job you did, though.” Peter has already got their coffees somehow. Martin never told him he didn’t like Americanos, but that doesn’t matter. Peter beckons Martin to sit down, and Martin obliges. In a lower voice, he asks, “Have you had that discussion with your familiar we talked about?”

Martin’s stomach drops. He hasn’t. He could lie and say he has, but what good would that do him? Peter’s trying to help him. It won’t do him any good not to tell him the truth. “No. I tried to, but I just… it wasn’t a good time.”

Peter’s brow furrows in disappointment for a moment. “Ah, well. It’s understandable, really. Most of my students have trouble letting go. And that’s why I think it’s important to start your practical training.”

“Practical training?”

“Yes. I think it will help you to realize the true scope of what we’re doing here. What’s the phrase?” Peter swirls his cappuccino in his cup. “Give a man a fish…”

“He’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish--”

“He’ll eat for a lifetime. That’s it. Of course, you’ll be able to resurrect the fish many times over once we’re done. That’s about where the metaphor breaks down. But I think this will help you to see that your relationship to Cinnamon--”

“Saffron--”

“Is only hurting you. It’s all for the best, really. And besides, I’m sure they will be happier separate from you than tied to one soul forever. They must be. They did leave for quite a while, after all.”

Martin hates it, but Peter is right. He and Saffron have done nothing but argue, and what he thought had been concern on Saffron’s part may just have been concern for the power they shared. Saffron’s leaving, too, had been unusual. It’s not unheard of, Martin knows, for familiars and witches to take breaks. It is, however, extremely rare. It also usually precedes the end of the relationship between the two. And Martin hasn’t been kind to them. He’s repeatedly ignored their advice, snapped at them, forced them to hide for the sake of his job, and all manner of awful things. Perhaps they really would both be better off alone.

“You’re right.” Martin says finally. “Where do I start?”

Peter smiles. “Right there, Martin.”

Chapter Text

Jon finds that, despite how tired he is, he cannot go home tonight. His knees and ankles ache from being in the same position for hours and his head is swimming with so much information that he can scarcely process what’s on the page, but he stays. He stays in this position that is so obviously hurting him. He stays there, perhaps because his fear of leaving to find something worse outside the comfort of his office is more powerful than the severe discomfort he’s now experiencing.

If one asks him in the very distant future, they may find he has realized the irony of this. Perhaps he will laugh, pull his white hair into a bun, and hand them a cup of tea. Perhaps he will tell them that yes, he was a stubborn bastard, but he’s learned now how to draw a good boundary. Perhaps he will point to the beautiful picket fence he built in the back garden and perhaps he and they will laugh at the pun. Perhaps neither of them will mention the Archive. 

But Jon does not currently have this freedom of perspective. He wishes he did. If he did, he might have actually handed in one of the forty-six resignation letters he drafted. Even Martin said that. Martin. What was going on with him today? He’s never been this standoffish before. 

Could it be that Jon did something to offend him? It’s not unlikely. His attitude toward Martin before the invasion of the Archives was less than charitable, and he’s never been known for his subtle behavior. But if that’s true, why would Martin chase him down, even break into his apartment, in order to save him? It could just be that Martin naturally wanted to help people. But that doesn’t quite explain why he had stayed after the fact. 

“Because I care about you, okay?” That’s what Martin had said to him. Martin had said he cared about Jon and had held him . And now, not a week later, he’s giving Jon the cold shoulder.

Maybe that’s it, though. Maybe Martin realized he was never going to get back from Jon what he had given. Jon had said he cared about him too, but really, how much was that worth? Coming from someone who repeatedly stated his dislike of Martin in permanent recordings…. God. He’s really gone and done it. 

Jon buries his face in his hands. The one person he can rely on to believe him was Martin, and Jon has managed to alienate him this far already. No wonder it’s been so easy for Elias to get to him. He’s a fool. A damn fool. It’s a good job Martin has figured it out, he supposes. That way he doesn’t have to spend all his time making sure his absolute disaster of a boss isn’t on a fast track to getting himself killed, all the while being condescended to and disparaged and insulted beyond belief. Martin will find someone who values him. Martin will find someone he deserves.

Hot tears begin to push at Jon’s eyelids. He looks up at the ceiling to try and blink them away. There’s a fly there, he notices. It’s buzzing around the harsh LEDs, occasionally flying directly into them and being knocked back into the air. Jon watches this for several minutes. He takes deep, shuddering breaths, letting them go when the fly decides to ram itself into the light again. He’s neck-deep in it, he knows. But he’s not helpless; he has survived alone for years without Martin. He will get himself out of this, just like he has gotten himself out of everything. He will get to the bottom of Elias’s motivations, and he will do that all on his own. 

And with that, he stands and crushes the fly into the ceiling.

The tunnels are just as dark and confusing as he remembers. Jon has to focus all his energy into keeping his freckles glowing as he treads over the packed dirt. He can’t think too hard about the worm carcasses that appear in front of him every few steps. He can’t think about what happened last time he was here, the pain that had radiated through him, or the sheer despair that came with the prospect of dying alone in such a place. He’s got one goal: he has to find Jurgen Leitner.

It is altogether too easy to do so.

Perhaps it is by sheer luck or by intuition, but Jon finds the dirt changing to flagstones in what feels like thirty minutes. There is a door to the room, but its handle is covered with dust as if it hasn’t been touched for years. For a moment, Jon doubts whether he has found the right place. There is only one way to find out, though. The door screams horribly as Jon pushes it open.

The room is dark, much darker than he remembers. There had been light in this place before, but he hadn’t noticed at the time where it had come from. There are no visible light fixtures, except a single candle on the card table carved with little symbols. Next to it sits a little gold Zippo with an intricate spider’s-web inlay. Hesitantly, he lifts it, brushing off a layer of dust, and lights the candle. Its flame appears normal at first. 

Then, as if someone threw a switch, the entire room becomes bright as day.

Something, it is clear, has gone wrong.

All the stacks of books Jon had seen before are littered about the floor, having been cast aside as if in a search. The chairs that made up the bed have been tossed aside too. All the blankets have been thrown to one side, in a suspiciously large mound for what Jon remembers to have been very thin bedding. He pulls them aside gently, afraid to disturb what might be underneath. 

The smell is what hits Jon first. It’s like the filthiest toilet in the most ramshackle petrol station in Britain was filled with rotting eggs and other vegetables and left in the summer heat. The second thing to strike him is the sight of it: interrupting the tufts of white hair, there is a gaping hole where blood and bits of tissue are commingled in the worst possible consistency. The face he sees as he pulls the blankets back further is frozen in permanent shock.

Jurgen Leitner has been beaten to death.

He has been beaten to death, and someone tried to hide the body.

Chapter Text

It is Martin’s lunch break, and it’s time for him to rip off the plaster.

He’s procrastinated breaking things off for too long. And Peter’s right; his codependency will be the death of him. He’s not talked with Jon in three days and he’s spent more than half of that time worrying that something might be wrong. If he’s to follow the Lonely path, as Peter has taken to calling it, he’s going to have to quit mucking about and take the first step.

Saffron is curled up, in the form of a hamster, at the foot of his cot in Document Storage. A small part of him hesitates as he watches their little abdomen rise and fall, but he tamps it down like gunpowder. We’re done with this. We’re done waiting.

“Saffron?”

Saffron wakes with a start, staring up at Martin expectantly. Martin?

Martin takes a breath, squares his shoulders. “I think it’s time we stopped working together.” He keeps his voice entirely flat. He thinks of Peter. He thinks of the bird.

What do you mean?

Saffron has no reason to ask this question. They’ve worked with Martin for so long, their minds have been linked for so many years, there’s no point except as a last-ditch attempt to get Martin to explain himself. He has no intention of doing so. He doesn’t have a good explanation anyway. What would he say? asks the accuser inside him. That he had chosen to sacrifice his best friend to learn the magic of a stranger (who, he is reminded, broke into his place of work in the dead of night)? He remembers the things his mother used to say about his father. A bastard. A traitor. A selfish man who cared nothing for his wife. She would look at him when she said these things.

But what choice does he have? He’s come this far.

“You know what I mean.” He can see Saffron’s confusion, their worry, their care. He watches their face, waiting to hear them protest. They do not.

Yes. I do know what you mean. The hamster closes their eyes, morphing into the last form they had travelled in: a cat. The difference is that now, there are no lustrous golden stripes, no glimmering whiskers. It’s all a light taupe that could be expected from any stray.

Martin pictures them sitting on the coffee table, back arched, tail twitching before he ran off to Boothby Road. Don’t do that, they had said. It’s a terrible idea. And he’d gone anyway. Perhaps that’s why they’re accepting what he said so readily. Perhaps they were hoping he’d say this soon anyway. He can’t say he blames them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and means it.

Are you sure about this? Saffron pads toward him, tilting their head.

“Yes.”

Martin… They rub their head against his arm. He half-heartedly scritches behind their ears, blinking back the tears welling up in his eyes. If you ever need me again, I’ll come back. Remember that I’m always here. You can always call on me.

“I will,” Martin lies. 

And just like that, Saffron is gone again.

Numbly, Martin sits down on the cot. It’s still warm from where Saffron had sat.

He had known this would be hard, but he never imagined how much it would hurt. He knows why he’s doing this. He knows it’s a small price to pay for all the knowledge Peter Lukas has to offer, all the magic, the ability to heal anyone of anything even after they’ve died. But that doesn’t stop the sobs from racking his body as he processes what he’s done.

Saffron had said he could always call on them. Would they have said that, if they had known why Martin had told them to leave? Would they have promised to be there for him if they’d known the ease with which he agreed to isolate himself completely?

Martin’s stream of self-hatred is interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Don’t answer that,” comes a voice from behind him.

Martin whips around to see Peter, standing in a cloud of rapidly-dissipating fog. Hastily, he wipes the tears from his face as the knocking grows more insistent.

“It’s just Jon,” Peter says. “Don’t worry, I checked with a, er… friend of mine. He’s got nothing important to say. Really, it could have been an email. Besides, you and I have work to do.”

“What do you mean?”

Peter doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “By the way, I am proud of you. Excellent way to send away a familiar: short, sweet and to the point. You’ll be very good at walking this path of ours.”

The knocking stops.

“How did you know about that?”

“Oh, I’ve been here for at least ten minutes. As much as I appreciate your talents, Martin, you really must work on your perception. Come on, now, we haven’t got all day to exchange pleasantries.”

“What- where are we going?”

Peter smirks. “We’re going hunting, of course.”

Chapter Text

Hi everyone!

It's the Birdbrain here. First of all, I wanna thank you all for sticking with this fic for over a year now (holy shit!). I've really enjoyed writing this and I hope you guys enjoy what's to come.

I just figured I'd give you guys a little update/explanation because the last thing I want is for this fic to become yet another abandoned work and I don't want you all to think it is.

Here's the tea:

Until recently, I was recovered from my eating disorder. Circumstances in my life, however, became batshit insane and I've relapsed. Because of this, I'm gonna need to take some time off and focus on my mental health, so this fic will be on hiatus until Christmas. This is both to give me some motivation to recover and to give you all an expected date that this fic will update. I'll still be writing a bit, just not at a pace or quality that I'm comfortable putting online and a lot of my work is going to be recovery related. I want to be clear, this fic is not over. I am not abandoning it. We'll be resuming with a chapter from Jon's POV on Christmas day.

I wish you all the best of days and most peaceful of nights.

Yours truly,

Sparrow

Chapter Text

It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in central London. 

Probably too easy.

What Jon is doing is rash, and he knows it — at least, on some level. He has no idea what he’ll do with the body if things go wrong. He has no idea if there will even be a body. He has no idea whether he can even really threaten the man. All he knows is that Leitner is dead, Martin has no interest in helping him or even speaking to him, and he’s got to do something about Elias Bouchard. 

The plan — as far as Jon can be said to have one — is to get information first. The axe is more of a contingency plan if Elias won’t be forthright. 

He had almost sprinted to Document Storage earlier. in spite of himself. He never even considered going to Tim or Sasha. They don’t deserve to be dragged into this. Besides, they’d have probably called the police in minutes, and Jon knows better than anybody that the police have rarely helped anybody. No, it was Martin he went to. Always had been. It was a habit — a bad one, but a habit nonetheless. He’d knocked on the door, his heart racing, plead for Martin to answer. 

He had, of course, been met with nothing. 

After a torturous five minutes or so, he’d picked up his bag and left the Archives. 

Now, he is here. Rosie is where she usually is, sat outside Elias’s office typing away at God-knows-what. She looks up. The axe grows heavier in Jon’s bag.

“Do you have an appointment, dear?” 

“I’ll only be a minute,” Jon manages. He hasn’t thought about this. Can she see the sweat gathering above his upper lip? Does she notice the slight tremor in his hands? Does she see how he fidgets with his bag? She does. She must. 

That’s when the door swings open behind her. 

Elias is not surprised to see him. “Jon! Lovely. Come in. I thought you’d be here soon.”

“Thank you,” Jon manages. He follows Elias through the carved doorway to his office, with its swirling designs that look a little too much like eyes bearing down on him. Elias isn’t looking at him. It feels like he is. Jon catches a chill.

“Have a seat,” Elias says, rounding the corner of his desk and sitting down. 

It’s been a long time since Jon has been in this office. Everything seems to have got more sinister in that time: the bookshelves seem taller, the wood they’re made from seems darker, the light from the window is harsh like a spotlight from an old detective film, and those emerald curtains (tied back with a cord) seem like they’re inclining their heads to better See him. Jon pretends he didn’t hear Elias’s invitation to sit.

“Would you like some tea?” Elias suggests. It is a suggestion, really, rather than an offer; a suggestion to trust him despite what he did ( might have done? ) in the past. 

“That’s alright; thank you.” Jon almost whispers his reply. His hands grow clammy. Elias tries to make eye contact, and Jon refuses to let him. 

“If something’s wrong, you can tell me.” Elias says. “I know Mr. Leitner was… a great help to you, even if he did want my head.”

Jon’s head snaps up. “What did you say?”

Elias leans back in his seat. “I know you found Leitner — rest his soul —  in the tunnels. I’ve been known to take a stroll there myself, from time to time. I was rather shaken myself when I found him.”

“You killed him, didn’t you?” Jon says. 

“Heavens, no. I didn’t have to. Really, Jon, you should sit down. I can see your knees shaking from here.”

“I’m not sitting down,” Jon spits. “What happened to him?”

“Then I’ll stand.” Sure enough, Elias pushes back his chair and approaches Jon. When Jon doesn’t back away, he gently places a hand on his shoulder. Jon’s hand flies to his bag. The axe is still there, by his side, ready. “Jurgen Leitner was… unwell. He was a talented magician, and he knew his craft. Unfortunately, he didn’t know much else. I suspect it was years of exposure to those books he used to collect. You’ve seen them in the statements: Ex Altiora , A Disappearance , and the like?”

Jon’s arm relaxes. He has. And he knows what reading even a sentence of one of those books could do to someone. A whole library could…. Jon prefers not to think about it. 

Elias continues: “After many, many years of isolation, he’d convinced himself I was a criminal. He thought he’d been hired to track me down and kill me. Not that he was a threat, really. Jurgen couldn't hurt a fly. I thought letting him stay in the tunnels would do him some good. He was old, after all. I felt some pity for him. You understand.” 

“How was his head bashed in? Why was he hidden under a blanket?” Elias’s story could be believable, were it not for the way Jon had found Leitner’s body.

“I believe he did the first bit himself. Perhaps it was an act of desperation; he was ever so paranoid.” Elias looks genuinely sad, like he’s lost a good friend. “As for the blanket, I must admit I put it there. I couldn’t bear to see him in such a state.”

That makes sense. Elias isn’t stupid enough to try to hide a body under something as flimsy as a blanket. 

Elias slides his arm across Jon’s shoulders. “I know you spoke to him. He talked about finding you in the tunnels when you were ill. I am sorry you had to find out the way you did.”

“Is….” Jon takes a breath. “Is his body still there?”

“It is.”

“Why haven’t you taken it… I don’t know, to a morgue?”

“I don’t know,” Elias sighs. “Perhaps I don’t trust them to handle him with care. Perhaps it’s simply because I’m afraid they’ll come to the same conclusion you have.” Elias turns to face Jon. “There is nothing to be afraid of with me, Jon. I will not hurt you. I’m afraid I simply couldn’t.” Elias is looking at Jon with a warmth he hasn’t seen in a while. The last person who had looked at him like that was Martin, and now, Martin won’t even answer the door when Jon knocks. 

“Do you trust me, Jon?” Elias asks. His hands move down, closing around each of Jon’s. They’re soft, not at all like Martin’s calloused ones, and nimble. His fingers are bony and cool against the sweat building in Jon’s own palms. The tenderness of the gesture freezes Jon’s mind in place. This is incredibly inappropriate, he knows, but he can’t seem to convince himself it’s true.

“I don’t know,” Jon replies. 

“That’s all right,” Elias says, softly. “I’m not sure I would trust myself if I were in your place.” He reaches up to brush a bit of hair behind Jon’s ear. “Just know, Jon, that I do care for you, and when you’re ready, I’m here.”

The taller man encloses Jon in his embrace.

Despite the warning bells in his mind, Jon hugs him back.

Chapter Text

“Peter, I don’t know if I can —”

“Come on, Martin. This is the most humane thing you could possibly do. Look at the state she’s in.”

Martin looks at the woman standing in the alley below himself and Peter. Her phone casts a pale blue light over her brown hair and light skin, as well as the smoke rising from her lit cigarette. She’s not dressed for the cool weather, and it’s clear she’s been crying. 

“And this… this is supposed to help her?”

“It’ll put her out of her misery, at least.” Peter chuckles. His voice grows serious then, and he claps a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “She has no one. Her mum kicked her out, she’s not managed to make any friends, and her partner’s leaving her. She can’t even get a job. This way, she’ll be making a real difference — ”

“ — by giving us more power,” Martin interjects, pushing away Peter’s hand and swallowing his doubt. “I know. I just don’t think it’s right to — ”

“She’ll be fine , Martin. In the Lonely, you don’t get hungry. You don’t need to sleep. You don’t need anything. You, of all people, know how wonderful that could be.”

Martin can’t argue with that. The Lonely’s presence was always peaceful to him, and to be there forever? Never being judged, never being watched, never having to worry about anyone else… she’d forget about her life before, he figures, eventually. She’d be okay. 

Martin remembers the bird.

He remembers Jon.

“Show me how.”

Peter grins. “I knew you’d come ‘round.” He offers his hand. “I don’t do this often, but you’d better hold on. It’s easy to get lost in here, and you’ve got work to do before we can afford for that to happen,” he says. 

“What do you mean?” Martin asks.

“Trust me. This is more fun than taking the stairs.” Peter grabs Martin’s hand, and immediately, the area around them is filled with swirling white fog. The wind races over Martin’s ears, and a chill creeps through the weave of his shirt.

When it dissipates, Martin and Peter are standing in the alley. The woman they were just watching looks up, but not at them. Her eyes are distant, like she’s looking for something far away.

“She can’t see us,” Peter explains. “It’s… something of a perk for those who follow our path.”

Makes it easier to hunt, I suppose. “So how do we do this?” 

Peter grins. “That’s the fun part. We don’t really have to.” He sticks his hands in his pockets, and Martin watches as Peter begins to whistle.

It’s a slow, melancholy tune. No doubt the song is old. It sounds like a sea shanty, but without the steady rhythm. As it carries on through the alley, the wisps of remnant fog at their feet grow, reaching out toward the woman as if to embrace her. She furrows her brow, taking a few steps toward them. 

A sick feeling builds in Martin’s stomach. Peter told him she’d be fine, that the Lonely really is a paradise for people like her — for people like him, too — but this feels wrong. The feeling grows worse, heavier, as the woman walks through the space between himself and Peter. 

Peter watches her too, with an almost childlike glee. Martin isn’t sure he’s seen him look this elated since they met, not even when Martin had agreed to work with him. His steely grey eyes are fixed on the woman for what seems like an eternity. He’s stopped whistling; he doesn’t need to anymore. The fog has become like a third wall, and Martin can almost hear the wind from before. 

It closes around the woman seconds after she passes through it, and dissipates.

Peter turns to Martin. “Rather fun, isn’t it?”

Martin’s heart starts to beat just a little faster than it did before. 

Back at Misty Shores, Martin has once again got an americano. He’s not sure if he’s got a taste for them now or if it’s simply a reflex, but he doesn’t have to talk to Denzal anymore. The barista simply hands him the mug without making eye contact and goes back to whatever they were doing. It’s nice, in a way. He’s got no chance of screwing this up.

Peter is sat across from him at their usual table, his cappuccino untouched. 

“So….” Martin begins. He’s not sure what he wants to ask; he’s got so many questions. His mind is moving at a hundred miles an hour, and his leg is fidgeting beneath the table. He leaves his americano on the table, rapidly getting cold. It’s as if he’s already had five.

“Feels nice, doesn’t it? The rush?” Peter chuckles. 

Martin doesn’t respond. He really doesn’t feel like talking. If anything, he wants to leave. It isn’t that Peter is wrong, Martin just doesn’t have the patience for this. 

“You’re learning. That’s good.” Peter leans forward. There’s a spider on the table, Martin notices. It’s small, dark, but gleaming. It starts making its way up Peter’s cup.

“There’s a…” Martin points at the spider. As much as he likes them, he doesn’t think they’d be a good addition to Peter’s cappuccino. Besides, that might provide him with enough distraction to make an exit. 

Peter curses. “I thought I’d dealt with you,” he hisses, apparently at the little bug, crushing it beneath his thumb. “We’ve had… bug issues in the past. I’ll have to call the exterminator tomorrow. Meanwhile,” he grins. “You just see what you can do with all that energy, hm? And do tell Elias I said hello.”

Chapter Text

The next time Jon speaks to Elias, it’s in the break room. 

He’s sat there talking to Tim about nothing, really, which is honestly the safest thing for them both. If Tim has a flaw, it’s that he’s much too interested in the lives of other people. Not that Jon is much better these days. In any case, he’s entirely lost the thread of this conversation. He’s staring at his cup of tea, trying to count back the days since he’s had a cigarette. The last time he lit up… well, he was working in research, wasn’t he? Damn, it’s been a long time.

“Jon?” Tim laughs. “Everything alright, boss?”

Jon looks up with a start. “Yes, of course. You, uh… you were saying?”

“I was asking what your deal has been lately.”

“My… deal.” Jon is increasingly uncomfortable with where this is going.

“Yeah. You’ve been all kinds of spaced out lately. Come to think of it, Martin’s hardly been any better. Neither one of you talks to anybody. Well, not that you’re really a chatterbox, but —”

“You think there’s something going on between myself and Martin.” Jon stands up, chugs the last of his tea. He’d rather not talk about this.

“AHA! There is! I knew it!”

Jon turns and fixes Tim with his best over-the-glasses glare. “Tim, I suggest you drop the subject.” He turns to place another tea bag in his mug. “Whatever may or may not have happened, I can assure you, is none of your concern.”

“Sasha owes me a fiver.”

“Tim, for God’s sake, let it go!” Jon snaps, genuine anger sharpening his tone. 

Tim’s voice loses its color. “Right. I didn’t realize… sorry.” 

“Tim, I didn’t mean….” Guilt slackens Jon’s shoulders.

Tim clears his throat, puts on his cheerful demeanor again. “That’s alright, boss! It’s gotta be stressful lately, especially with Elias breathing down your — oh.”

“What?” Jon turns to face Tim just as Elias steps across the threshold.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Elias laughs.

“Damn straight,” Tim mutters. “Well, that’s me gone then. Lots to do.” He shoots Jon a quick mock-salute. “See you later, boss — er, boss es. ”

And with that, Jon is left alone with Elias. Again. 

“How’s your day been?” Elias asks, taking a seat opposite Jon at the table. “Productive, I assume. You’ve been here for the past, oh ....”

“Forty-eight hours.”

Elias shakes his head slightly. “At least you’re honest.”

A beat passes. Jon isn’t sure whether to move closer or stay where he is. “Can I help you with something?”

Elias starts. “Right. I was wondering if you had any plans this evening.”

“Plans?”

“Well, yes, Jon. It is a Friday evening after all.”

Jon hasn’t really registered what day of the week it is. He hasn’t slept either, and that can’t be doing his cognitive abilities any favors. “So it is.” He takes a deep breath. “I was going to get some more work done, to be honest. It seems like no matter how much I get done, there’s always more.” He laughs halfheartedly. “I’m sure you understand.”

Elias nods. “I do.” He produces a pen from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and takes a napkin from the centre of the table. “While I appreciate your dedication to the job, I will remind you that it can be good to spend some time doing things other than… this. I’m going to give you my home address. If you’d like — ” he writes the address in an impossibly elegant script, “ — it would be lovely for you to come ‘round and have dinner with me.”

Jon takes the napkin from Elias’s outstretched hand. He pauses for a moment. Elias stares into his eyes with an expression Jon can’t quite place. The way the light hits his irises… there’s something wrong about it. “Th-thank you,” Jon says, quietly. “I’ll definitely consider it.”

“Seven o’clock,” Elias grins. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Jon isn’t sure what he’s expecting when Elias answers the door, but it sure as hell isn’t this.

The man is dressed more casually than Jon thought possible for him: first off, he’s not sporting his usual three-piece suit. That, alone, is off-putting. He’s got khakis on, and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He’s even got a towel thrown over one shoulder. Jon didn’t realize people actually do that.

The older man clears his throat. “As delightful as I’m sure my doorstep must be, you may as well come in.”

Jon blinks a few times. “Right. Sorry.” 

When he steps in the door, he’s greeted by a little foyer of sorts, with an ornately carved wooden coat-rack to his right. It’s somewhat dark; the old gaslight on the wall has probably not been used for at least fifty years. Elias gestures as if to help Jon with his coat. He pretends not to have seen this, but does place his coat on the rack. 

Elias leads him into the rest of the house. It’s clearly very old, and more than likely listed, which would explain the presence of the old gaslights alongside electric ones.  It’s quite large, too, especially for this part of London, and decorated in ways Jon has only seen in museums. The central corridor is lined with paintings whose pigments have faded and cracked with time, and all the furniture is almost certainly antique. Jon would be surprised if any of this furniture wasn’t there when the place was built. He takes a few steps toward the wall. The wallpaper is a vivid green,  almost as if….

“There’s no arsenic in the wallpaper,” Elias says. “Well, there used to be. I did my best to match the old color with the modern stuff.”

“I see.”

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’d best be off to the kitchen. Feel free to have a seat in the drawing-room; I won’t be gone long.”

“Thank you,” Jon replies. He’s rather unused to being a houseguest; his grandmother never had friends over when he was a child and he’s not known to have many friends himself. He tries to digest the butterflies in his stomach as he goes to sit down on one of the satin settees just beyond the drawing-room door, marvelling at the way the place has been preserved. Elias must have a great respect for it. At least, he must have some sort of attachment to it.

Like the hallway, the drawing-room walls are papered with a damn good imitation of arsenic green, and the paintings here are just as old. They seem to be better taken care of, however; the paint doesn’t seem to have faded. A few of them, Jon notices, seem older even than the house. They’re rendered beautifully, with an almost Vermeer-like clarity, but they’re not from the Dutch renaissance. The subjects are all wrong. They seem to depict intimate moments, like a fine lady with her back to the viewer at a desk, or a child having just laid down to sleep. Jon tries to ignore the urge to make sure there’s no one behind him.

At least, until he notices the spider on the settee next to him.

Jon’s not aware for a minute where the yelp he hears came from, but when Elias bursts in looking quite concerned for his safety, he realizes it must have been him. 

“Jon?” Elias moves to place a hand on his shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

Jon tries to regain his composure. It works, at least halfway. “I, uh… I saw a spider.”

Elias nods. “A little arachnophobic, are we? Where was it?” 

Jon feels his ears growing hot with embarrassment. “On… on the settee.”

Elias moves over to inspect it. “Ah, yes. I see it. One moment.” He traces the little black dot of the spider with his finger, then sweeps the thing into the floor and crushes it with his toe in two smooth motions. “All taken care of. I thought Titania would send her little spies eventually.” A timer goes off in the kitchen. “Right on cue,” Elias chuckles. “Shall we?”

“You mentioned Titania earlier,” Jon says, between bites of some chicken dish he can’t identify. It tastes faintly of mustard and white wine. “You’re on a first-name basis with the queen of the Fae?”

“Did I?” Elias quirks an eyebrow. “Ah, right. I suppose I did. She’s got an unfortunate penchant for espionage; rathar paranoid of her, if you ask me. And yes, I suppose I am. We used to work together, many years ago.”

“Work together?”

“I suppose you’re familiar with the Mother of Puppets?”

Jon can’t remember hearing anything about this person, but a spark of recognition flies across his mind for a moment. “The Fae… they work with her, don’t they?”

“Very astute, Jon. Impressive.”

“But you don’t anymore?”

Elias smiles wryly. “No. Titania was rather unhappy with me when I told her, too. ‘Magnus,’ she told me, ‘you’re going to run yourself into the ground with the Beholding.’”

Jon feels he’s missed something. “Magnus?”

“My given name. I’m called Elias here. That makes it easier to fake my death every hundred years or so; you can imagine how the humans would react if they figured out how long those of our kind live.”

“Right….” Jon wonders if he might need a second name one day. “Does Titania— does the queen have a name like that?”

Elias, or perhaps Magnus, takes a sip of wine, pondering the question. “I believe she does. Annabelle Cane, if memory serves.”

“And what should I call you ?”

“Well, you’re not really human, are you?” The older man smiles across the table. “Call me Magnus.”

Chapter Text

Martin has been avoiding Misty Shores like the plague for several days now. The problem is, he’s also been avoiding everyone else. He rarely speaks to Tim or Sasha unless he has to, and they’re starting to notice. On Wednesday, Sasha had asked him if something was up.

The good thing, Martin supposes, about being a people-pleaser is that no one assumes you’re avoiding them on purpose. They’re worried, yes; they’re concerned, but never really angry. Why would they be? You’ve always been kind to them. They assume you don’t have an asshole bone in your body.

But they’re wrong, Martin reminds himself as he turns the corner behind a pub. He doesn’t look it, but he’s probably irredeemable. If he isn’t quite there yet, he will be soon.

Because since Martin watched Peter feed that woman to the Lonely, he hasn’t been the same. He’s felt a tug in his chest, a need to go out and bring the fog with him. He was able to ignore it at first, to push it aside, but it got to be too much. Once the hook is in its cheek, a fish can’t swim away for very long. Martin has to come out of the pond now.

It’s the same alleyway as before. It’s quiet, secluded, especially at this hour right after everything has shut. The perfect place to stay out of the way.

Laughter in the distance. A group of friends. One straggler. He takes a deep breath.

You’re doing her a favour, Peter’s echo reminds him.  

The words come to him so easily:

“ The king he wrote a broad letter

And he sealed it with his hand

And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens

Walking out on the strand

To Norway, to Norway, to Norway

To Norway o’er the foam

With all my lords and finery

To bring my new bride home.”

He watches a young man, a little younger than himself, look up. None of his friends notice. The chill of the fog creeps up Martin’s back. 

“ The first line that Sir Patrick read

He gave a weary sigh

The next line that Sir Patrick read

A salt tear blinds his eye

"Oh, who is it, oh, who is it

Who told the king of me

To set us out this time of year

To sail across the sea?”

In the dim light, Martin watches the young man’s brow furrow. He moves toward the alley. His friends move on. They will forget him. It’ll be like he was never there, and Martin knows that’s what this young man wants. He wants to disappear. 

“‘ But rest you well, my good men all

Our ship must sail the morn

With four and twenty noble lords

Dressed up in silk so fine

And four and twenty feather beds

To lay their heads upon

Away, away, we’ll all away

To bring the king's bride home"

Martin pauses. Why is he still here? Why would the Lonely need someone else to sustain it? He’s pretty sure he’s keeping it well-fed all on its own. But it’s almost too late now. The young man responds, with a shaky but beautiful tenor voice:

“ I fear, I fear, my captain dear,

I fear we’ll come to harm

Last night I saw the new moon clear,

The old moon in her arm.”

He’s less than a metre away from Martin. The fog has wrapped around his feet. He can feel it, urging him to go on. He knows what Peter told him.

But the light catches the young man’s eyes just right, and Martin can’t do it. Something inside him knows this isn’t right. The Lonely isn’t welcoming this man. It’s hungry, and it doesn’t want him to survive. Martin could swear he almost sees Saffron, sitting off to the side. Gods, what would they think of him now?

He lets the spell go and makes a break for it. The young man will find his way back. Martin heads at a dead sprint around the side of the building before his would-be victim can catch a glimpse of his face. When he rounds the corner onto the main road, who should be there but an old sea captain with a weakness for cappuccinos. Martin storms up to him.

“What the fuck is happening to me?”

“Martin, I don’t think—”

Martin grabs Peter Lukas by the collar of his god-awful peacoat and shoves him against the lamppost. “You’re going to tell me why I almost fed a man to the Lonely tonight.” 

Peter doesn’t react. His steely grey eyes pierce directly into Martin’s. “I think you know exactly why that is, Martin. After all, you’re awfully bright.”

“Spell it out for me,” Martin growls. “I know what your game is now. Those people… I wasn’t helping them. I could feel it.”

Peter laughs. “Of course you weren’t, Martin. We don’t help the cows we turn into hamburgers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Peter quirks an eyebrow. “Let go of me and I’ll tell you.” Martin obliges. “Right. You’re bonding with the Lonely. You must know this by now.”

Martin nods. He hadn’t known, not on a surface level, but the fog came when he called. He doesn’t enjoy speaking to people anymore. 

“The Lonely lives on fear. A specific kind of fear. And now that you’re a part of it, well… so do you.” 

Martin feels as if the pavement under him has caved in.

“The good news,” Peter continues, brushing himself off. “Is that you’ve got what you wanted.I saw it answer your call. Really, brilliant stuff.” He places a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “You’ve connected to a power you could never have imagined. Make good use of it.”

“How the hell am I supposed to—” Martin starts, but Peter is already turning away.

“You’ll figure something out, Martin,” he replies cheerily. “Just do me a favour and don’t get cocky. It’s not your friend, it’s a tool. Elias might have something to tell you about that.”

Chapter Text

The third time Jon makes his way to Elias’s front door, the weakness in his knees and the urge to bolt have all but disappeared. He’s been here twice already. If Elias— if Magnus had wanted to hurt him, or had an ulterior motive (beyond the obvious), he’s had ample opportunity. There remains a slight tremor in his wrists as Jon fiddles with his shirtsleeves, but he puts it down to his habit of using tea as a meal replacement. 

He raises his hand to knock, but Magnus appears at the door before Jon gets the chance. The older Fae beams at him at first, but his expression quickly turns grave. 

“Don’t move,” Magnus murmurs, taking a step down onto the stoop. 

He and Jon are within less than a breath of each other. The former squints. He raises a hand, against which Jon instinctively braces, then, quicker than lightning, a light smack comes down on Jon’s upper arm. 

Magnus’s face resumes its cheer. “Terribly sorry about that. You had a spider on your shoulder.” He holds up a pale, long-fingered hand, on which is scattered the squashed bits of the former arachnid. 

Jon forces a chuckle. His shoulders are still tense. “That’s quite alright.” He looks Magnus directly in the eyes for the first time tonight, with something like surprise. He is keenly aware of the inches between them. He is keenly aware of both of their breaths filling those inches with fog. He is keenly aware of the warmth of those inches and the chill at his back. For a moment, neither he nor Magnus speaks. Then, good-naturedly, Magnus throws an arm around Jon’s shoulders and guides him through the door.

An aroma of herbed butter has permeated the whole of the house. Jon restrains the urge to take a deep breath, to drink in the way it’s mingled with the smell of old books. He allows Magnus to take his coat tonight. From the corner of his eye, he watches the man’s lips form their secret smile. It is all very… literary, he decides. The vividness of sensation Jon feels within this house is the kind of thing, he figures, belongs in poetry; it doesn’t feel safe, per se, but it does feel.

It’s precisely the kind of thing Martin might say.

It’s precisely the kind of thing Jon would admire him for saying.

No matter. He turns away from the thought, to face Magnus. 

“I hope you like venison,” says Jon’s host, offering his arm. “A, er… friend of mine enjoys hunting, and she sends me her catches when she can’t store everything.” 

Jon shrugs, awkwardly taking Magnus’s arm and following him into the kitchen. “I’ve never tried it.” 

Magnus blinks a moment, as if taken slightly aback, before nodding as if he’s remembered who he is talking to. “It’s rather a more common dish in Avalon,” he says. “Though it can’t quite be prepared the same here. There are fewer deer, for one thing, different herbs here. And not nearly as many banquets; they seem to have fallen out of fashion in the last few centuries.” Jon swallows his shock. Of course Magnus has been alive for centuries. His own grandmother had been nearly nine hundred years old when she died, and her death had been more of ennui than anything else. He scrambles, searching for something intellectual or witty to follow that up with. He comes up dry. Magnus produces two glasses from a finely-carved cupboard, apparently oblivious to Jon’s floundering. “Fortunately—” he winks as if they’ve shared a joke— “the wine is just as good anywhere.”

Jon watches him fill the two glasses with wine the colour of plums, and accepts one of them from his host. It smells almost like blackcurrant jam, with something that reminds Jon of unburnt tobacco. Though he’s never been a lightweight, a sip of the stuff causes his whole body to tense. It’s startlingly bitter, and it lingers on his tongue like candied ginger. 

Magnus watches him intently for a moment, then blinks as if he’s just remembering something. “Shall we have a seat in the dining room?”

Magnus’s cooking is, much like his wine and his home, wonderful in the most literal sense. He’s set the table with china that Jon figures ought to be in a museum, if it weren’t under the care of someone so meticulous. 

Jon’s shoulders loosen. The combination of the wine and the fastidious detail with which Elias maintained his home is… soothing. He barely remembers the unease that had caused him to flinch earlier. Their conversation flows easily and automatically, as if they were actors reading a script. 

“How are things with your assistants?” Magnus asks at one point. 

Jon shrugs, trying not to think of Martin. “Rather well, I think. Tim and Sasha have made excellent progress with the Smith case.”

“A hoax, as you thought?” Magnus’s head tilts.

Jon nods. “In a manner of speaking. An old woman in the Cotswolds, with no company but her dog….” He takes a sip of wine. It was the only statement this week he hadn’t had to record twice. “You can imagine, I’m sure.”

Magnus nods at that. “Loneliness has a way of eating at people, doesn’t it?”

The look that passes between them is perhaps a little too knowing for Jon’s comfort, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared. “You mentioned Avalon earlier,” he prompts.

Magnus perks up at that. “Ah, yes. Did you have a specific question about it, or…?

I want to know everything. “Where, exactly, is it?”

“It’s not really in a specific place,” Magnus replies. “It was in Glastonbury for a while, but the isle likes to roam.”
“Then how does one get there?”

Magnus smiles, maybe a little ruefully. “I’m sure you’ve seen fairy rings? That’s the fastest way, but….” The older man trails off, suddenly very interested in his otherwise-untouched venison. 

“But what?” Jon prods. He doesn’t want to be rude, but this is the first time he’s gotten anything other than quiet dismissal from someone else of his kind. 

Magnus takes a deep breath. “You can’t pass through a fairy ring undetected. It’s a bit like a door with motion-activated CCTV.” His voice lowers. “And the Fae realm is hardly welcoming to strangers….” His gaze is peculiar. Evaluating, perhaps. “Or exiles.” His gaze shifts to a dark spot on the white tablecloth, and he curses. “Another spider.”

Some time later— Jon has lost track— he and Magnus have moved to the drawing-room. The paintings, which had set him on edge so much before, don’t seem so sinister. The detail of them, which previously struck him as eerie, now seemed almost… adoring. Maybe he’s grown used to them. Maybe it’s the wine. How many glasses has he had now? 

Magnus lounges on the other end of the settee, and there’s an ease about him that is further calming to Jon. Without his three-piece suits and perfect, businesslike posture, he doesn’t loom so large. The crackle of the fireplace has made room for a comfortable silence. Maybe Magnus isn’t so bad after all. And he’s never had anything like this with Martin. With Martin, he’s always guessing, tripping over himself; he can never be good enough. It isn’t Martin’s fault, not really. It’s Jon’s. He knows that, if he ever really let Martin get to know him, there’s a good chance that Martin will realise he deserves more than Jon can give. It would all be over before it began. But the way Magnus is looking at him is simple. It’s observation, not analysis. He’s content not to peel back Jon’s shell right now, content with his lack of understanding, and Jon thinks he could extend the same courtesy.

That’s why Jon inches closer to Magnus. That’s why Jon takes his hand into his own, soft like new suede, and buries the other in Magnus’s salt-and-pepper hair. That’s why he doesn’t hesitate a moment when he kisses his cheek, his lips, his neck. 

But Magnus places a hand on Jon’s chest, and something in him plummets. A moment passes, and he looks at Jon the same way he did before he took his coat.

Jon almost laughs when Magnus brushes a hand over his hair, and squishes the third spider of the evening. 

Chapter Text

Nearly a week after his fight with Peter, Martin is supposed to be cataloguing Jon’s tapes. He’s the only one in the Archive right now, since Tim and Sasha are off at lunch and Jon is holed up in his office like usual. That’s good, because there’s no one else here to see him struggle. 

The task, in theory, is simple: read the label, place it in the correct box, and take the box to the right shelf. Anyone could do it; they wouldn’t even have to know the Archive well. That’s why it’s so frustrating when Martin has to read each label four times before he can process what it says, and why he curses when his hands begin to shake or his vision goes dark from standing up too fast. 

It wasn’t like this before. When he and Peter fed that woman to the Lonely, the rush of energy had come and gone and there was no sign afterward that anything was wrong. The day after he’d chickened out of his own hunt, though— gods, when had he started thinking of it as a hunt? 

The day after, he’d eaten his egg sandwich, just like always, and by noon his stomach was in his throat. He put it down to stress, or maybe the egg had gone off. His next two meals went much the same: he had normal portions of food he ate every day, but in a few hours, the nausea kicked in. The next day, he felt so awful that he called in sick. By that evening, he found he wasn’t able to eat anything at all. He tried, he really did, but he couldn’t keep it down. So he did what he always did when he was ill, and put the kettle on. Trying to enchant his tea, however, proved both useless and even more draining than the lack of food, so he gave that up quickly. 

He’s not stupid. By the third day, Martin had figured out what was happening. By calling on the Lonely, even though he hadn’t followed through, he must have given it something to latch onto. Trying to eat regular food must be like pouring water into a petrol tank. He’s weak and starving and he can’t sleep anymore, but he knows that the only way to get his strength back is to do what Peter told him to do. He can’t do that. He can’t do that. 

But now, sitting in front of these tapes, the dead bird flashes across his mind. 

You just see what you can do with all that energy, hm?

He sees Jon again, sweating, convulsing, screaming silently.

It’s not your friend, it’s a tool.

What Peter does is despicable, yes, but Martin’s magic had been so strong after that woman walked through the fog. Because he couldn’t stand to feed another person to it, Martin is now no use to himself ; let alone anyone else. Maybe that’s the trade-off, he decides. If you want to do big magic, magic to raise the dead, you’re going to need big power. More power than you can get on your own. If he does enough good with that power, does it matter how he got it?

He gets up slowly, takes a deep breath, and starts down the corridor toward the stairs.

When he turns the corner, though, he walks directly into Jon. 

Jon, who is looking at him with a combination of worry and pity that would have put Martin’s grandmother to shame. 

Jon, who is wearing a shirt and vest that Martin’s only ever seen on one person.

Jon, who slept with Elias.

“Martin?”

He makes a point not to look the Head Archivist in the eye. “‘Scuse me,” he says. It’s none of his business who Jon is sleeping with. It’s none of his business whose clothes Jon is wearing. It’s none of his business. Why should it be? He’s not going to say anything. He tries to keep going, but Jon catches his arm.

The touch is gentle, almost hesitant. Jon might as well have slapped him. “Is everything alright? You seem rather….”

Gods. Martin jerks away from Jon’s hand, half-voluntarily. “Rather what, Jon?” he snaps.  He hates himself for talking this way. He has to talk this way. He has to get out of the building. “I’ve got a lot to do, so if you’ll excuse me—”

Jon flinches. “I’m sorry. It’s just… we haven’t spoken in a while, and I was—”

“I’m fine.” Martin says, as if it were an apology. It isn't. “Just in a hurry.” He starts off down the corridor again, then pauses a moment to look back. “You look good, by the way.”

Jon doesn’t respond.

Martin doesn’t even have to sing for the fog to roll in now. It’s so quick, closing around the old man at the bus stop, that Martin doesn’t even have to see his face. One minute, he’s sat there, with his worn cardigan buttoned all the way up against the cold, and the next, it’s like no one was there to begin with. And Martin feels like a new man. 

When he arrives at Misty Shores, the door is open. It’s quiet, as usual, but there’s something missing. 

When he crosses the threshold, glances around, Peter isn’t there. Neither is Denzal. The only thing in the room is the birdcage, which normally contains a perfectly happy, chirping thing. But it’s not on its perch. Instead, as Martin inches closer, all he sees is a decaying pile of flesh and feathers.

Out of the corner of his eye, there’s a flash of gold.

“Hello?” he calls.

“Hello!” says a cheery voice behind him. 

Martin nearly jumps clear out of his skin. He whirls around. “Peter.”

“You’re rather early,” says the older man, a heavy cloud dissipating into the space around him. “I wasn’t expecting you’d be back until tonight.”

Martin takes a breath. He’s got to stay collected. It’s a means to an end. “Well, I’m back now.” He gestures around the coffee shop. “Where is everyone? What happened to the bird?”

Peter smiles a little. It makes Martin’s skin crawl. “Denzal is… on sabbatical. It seems hunting the undesirable was starting to lose its kick. As for the bird, well,” he begins to chuckle, “it’s fine. I just let go of the strings, so it’s looking a little slack. See?” Peter waves a hand, and the caged carcass pitches upright. Now that he’s closer, he sees what’s really going on. Behind the bird’s eyes, barely perceptible, is a wisp of white fog. 

A snowstorm of rage howls in Martin’s ears. I’ve been had. “You never brought it back to life, did you?”

Peter only laughs harder. “Of course not, Martin. You and I both know magic can’t raise the dead.” He reaches out to pat Martin on the shoulder, but Martin pushes his hand away.

“You lied to me!” Martin shouts. “You took advantage of me, you made me into—”

Peter’s laughter ceases immediately. “You believed me, Martin.”

Martin’s arms go slack at his sides. He had believed Peter. Despite everything he knew, all his experience, he believed the first person who told him he could do the impossible.

Peter shakes his head. “You didn’t have to come and meet me. You didn’t have to ask me to show you our ways. And I’ll tell you a secret,” he says, leaning in toward him. “If you’d left that old man on the bench where you found him, you’d have been back to normal in a week. No, Martin.” Peter turns around and heads for the door. “You did all of this all on your own.” He pauses on the threshold, and looks back to where Martin has crumbled into the floor. “And I am so very proud of you.”

Martin watches Peter go through the cloud closing around him.

Chapter Text

Jon is seated on the floor with crossed legs, an ever-increasing pile of statements that can’t be digitized, and a cooling cup of tea, when his office door creaks open. It’s not Tim or Sasha; the workday was supposed to have ended an hour ago. They’ll both have left. 

It’s Magnus who stands at the threshold, with that same elegant posture and easy bearing he always has. Normally, Jon would be irritated that he didn't knock. As it stands, though, the presence of another person in the room releases a tension in his shoulders that he didn’t realize was there. The creeping terror that’s been building up rushes out of the room like steam rushes out of a shower door. Jon finally, for the first time in hours, feels safe enough to stand up with his back to the tape recorder. 

Magnus raises an eyebrow. 

“Is everything alright, Jon?”

Jon’s cheeks heat up as he sets his cup of tea down on the desk. He swallows the lump in his throat. 

“Perfectly fine,” he replies, suddenly grateful for his ability to lie. 

Magnus smiles and moves closer, holding Jon’s gaze for a bare second too long. Jon is caught somewhere between wanting to throw himself at Magnus and nausea at the thought of touching him again. He perches on the edge of his desk, and picks up the cold tea. 

“You asked to see me; I hope it’s an opportune time,” Magnus says, glancing over at the pile of statements.

Jon immediately moves to pick them up, tucking some stray hair behind his ear as he goes. He did indeed send Magnus an email asking if they could talk, at about three o’clock this morning, but he hadn’t expected Magnus would see it, let alone have time to address it so soon. 

“Right. I wanted to talk to you about the….” Jon pauses for a moment, searching for the right phrase. He feels Magnus’s eyes on his back, catlike, almost too bright. Jon speaks slowly and deliberately. “The offer you made me. Before. I said no at the time, but since then I’ve reconsidered. I was… I was wondering if it was still on the table.” 

When he turns, Magnus is absolutely beaming. Jon’s stomach flips. He’s never known Magnus to beam. His heart speeds. 

“Are you sure, Jon?” Magnus tilts his head slightly to one side. His voice has softened, like Jon is an animal he’s trying not to scare off. 

Jon sets his shoulders. “There would be conditions, of course. I want to know exactly what I’m getting into before I say anything, and there’s still the matter of” —he holds up the growing stack of files and paper— “these.” 

Magnus, still smiling, says, “of course. What questions do you have?”

Jon blinks a few times. What questions does he have? “I— I—” Oh. That. He takes a breath. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what exactly is the Fae procedure for a divorce?”

Magnus, who looked a little tense as Jon spoke, laughs. “Oh, no, Jon. That’s hardly rude. I’d be worried if you didn’t ask, truly.” He places an arm around Jon’s shoulder, which both slows the younger man’s racing heart and sends a fresh wave of nausea over him. “It’s been said that Fae marriages are more like mortal employment contracts than holy matrimony. There are often conditions built into the vows under which the marriage would be dissolved.”

“No ‘’til death do us part, eh?” Jon chuckles. So there is a way out if this doesn’t work. 

“Oh, heavens, no.” Magnus laughs. “We live far too long. Even mortals would balk at being married for centuries.”

The prospect of marrying Magnus now seems much less daunting, but it’s still marriage. 

“Would I— would we keep our jobs? Wouldn’t it be a conflict of interest?”

Magnus ponders a moment. “That depends, really. If we went back to Avalon, we wouldn’t have to. Magic takes care of most things there, and I do have a considerable estate. Any work either of us did would be purely by choice.”

Avalon. The thought of seeing the place where his mother came from hits Jon like a bolt of lightning, curiosity replacing his anxiety. “And could we? Go back to Avalon, I mean? I am still half— half-mortal.” Jon may never get used to talking about humans that way. It’s odd. Slimy. 

Magnus’s grin deepens, his voice taking on a conspiratorial manner. “You needn’t worry about that. I’ve got a pretty solid plan. As long as we conduct the ceremony properly, you shouldn’t have any trouble. You’ll be able to go home.”

“I could get my lineage marks.” Jon thinks aloud, despite himself.

“You could.” Magnus looks excessively pleased, like a farmer who didn’t expect his tomatoes to ripen this early. Jon would be unsettled, but right now he’s too busy turning the possibilities over in his mind to worry. 

He’s just got one question. It’s trivial, really. “And what exactly does the ceremony entail?”

Magnus blinks a few times. “Ah, yes. That. It’s rather complicated, but we can discuss it over dinner later if you like,” he says almost hopefully. 

Jon really has no problems with that. If the Fae view marriage so cavalierly, how involved could their ceremonies really be? A sort of calm washes over Jon. It all makes sense now. Yes, he’ll go and see Magnus later for dinner, and they’ll sort out the rest of the details. 

“Absolutely,” he says.

Magnus stands, making for the door, then turns back as if he’s just remembered something important. He reaches into his pocket, producing a small wooden box, half the size of his palm. It’s gilded around the edges, with impossibly ornate carvings of spider’s webs and butterflies. 

“I won’t say that I expected you to reconsider, but I’ve been keeping this for a while, and now that you have….” He presses the box into Jon’s hand. “I thought you might like something more familiar.”

With one last grin in Jon’s direction, Magnus leaves, closing the door behind him. 

Jon opens the box. Inside is a silver ring, made to resemble several miniscule vines. Where a diamond would typically be set, there is an emerald, and though it seems like there’s no real setting at all to hold it in place, the ring itself winds around the gem to hold it there. It rather resembles an eye, Jon thinks. 

No sooner has Jon slipped the thing over his left ring finger than something scrapes against the doorway.

His first instinct is to jump back, maybe go for the CO2, but then he hears the meowing. 

It can’t be. Slowly, he opens the door again. 

Thought their fur has gone dull and they look absolutely disheveled, there’s no mistaking that cat.

“Saffron?”

Chapter Text

Martin sits on a floor that is no longer wood, waiting for the fog to clear so he can see his new surroundings. It never does, and so he doesn’t move. 

The hardwood shifted at some point into something that seems to be sand. Martin can’t tell. Whatever it is, it’s cool to the touch. It’s soft. There might be crashing waves in the distance, or a lake; he can’t see it.

“Peter?” he calls. There is no response. “Peter?”

His throat starts to close up. What has he gotten himself into? He stands, the sand shifting under his weight and slipping into his shoes. He may be blind, but he has to get up, has to move. He finds himself heading toward whatever water is rushing past. As he gets closer, the quiet around him grows more intense. Someone, anyone, has got to be here with him, even if he can’t see them. 

“Jon?” he says, his voice cracking.

Of course Jon isn’t here. Why would Martin call for him? What good can it do? This is the Lonely, after all— and Martin’s heart speeds at the realization. 

This is the god he’s been serving. 

This is where all his victims went.

His victims. 

No. No, no, no, no. He was doing what he had to, wasn’t he? To save Jon. To save his mother; gods, how long has it been since he checked in on her? She hasn’t had her medicine in— has it been weeks? Months? And what would it even matter, if his plan had worked and he reversed Jon’s curse? What did he think he would say when Jon asked how he did it? Suppose he told the truth; he can see how Jon would look at him. It’s the way he’s been looking at himself. What the fuck was he thinking?

He reaches down and runs a hand through the cold water. At least here, he won’t ever have to know what became of either of them. His actions and their consequences aren’t here. Nothing is here, nothing except the lake, and the fog, and Martin himself. He won’t have to face them. They won’t have to face him. 

And really, for all the harm he might have caused out there, at least now he can’t hurt anyone else. He laughs a little, and a tear pricks at the corner of his eye. He’s contained. 

It’s for the best. The way he spoke to Jon over the past few weeks— he sounded just like his mother. And he thought he was helping him; he thought he was doing the right thing by pushing him away. But that’s not how people work. That’s not even how Fae work. He thought he’d learned a long time ago how to show people he loved them, but he never really had. Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t help but do the exact same things his parents did: he was either spitting venom at the people he cared about, or he was abandoning them entirely, because he didn’t know what real love looks like and he thought he was already so wise . Why should someone like that ever expect to have a real connection?

It doesn’t matter. Jon is with Elias now. He’s happy. He’s finally going home sometimes at the end of the day, finally eating enough, and the dark circles under his eyes are damn near the same color as the rest of his face. Jon is doing better with Elias than he ever could have done with Martin. Why shouldn’t he be? Why was Martin angry with him for that? Jon is going to forget him, and he deserves it. He knows that like he knows up from down, like he knows wind from water. 

And Martin weeps. 

The sobs come before the tears. It’s like he can’t breathe. His lungs are trying so very hard to catch up, but his shaking and the cold and the thick fog won’t allow it. Slowly, his legs crumble from underneath him. His trousers are wet, and so are his socks; he must have waded in at some point, but he doesn’t care. There’s no one here to see him, no one to hear him, no one to comfort or judge him. The cries he hears don’t seem like sounds he can make. He lets the crying take over. The sobs rack his body. They’re painful. His voice is going hoarse quickly. Before he knows it, he’s reduced to sitting in the water with his knees drawn up to his chest, just like when he was a little boy, and he’s run out of tears to cry. 

Saffron would have been here for him, before. They would have watched over him, kept him safe, helped him get out of this mess before he had a chance to cause any real damage. But he couldn’t let them help him, no. He just had to do it all alone. He tries not to remember when they laid on his chest as a golden retriever after his father left, licking his face and doing silly little tricks to try and make him laugh. He tries not to miss the weight of a mouse in his pocket, occasionally squirming to get a look at their surroundings or wiggling out of place to sit on his shoulder. Even still, he feels cold, wet fabric where a cat used to nuzzle his leg. There is nothing else. 

For a long time, though Martin can’t say how long it’s been exactly, he sits there, utterly numb. There’s no need for him to cry. Not anymore. He has no one to cry over, and no one to cry over him. He’s made sure of it. The water is gentle, lapping at his sides and his feet. The wind is soft, brushing through his hair and cooling his red cheeks. The fog condenses on his eyelashes, soothing the puffiness of his eyelids. Hours pass, or days. 

Then, a voice breaks through the silence like a gunshot. 

“Martin?”

Martin flinches. It’s too loud. 

The wind carries a reply. It sounds like Peter. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

“Where are you?” the voice continues. Martin puts his hands over his ears. 

“I’m not here, Archivist,” says the wind. “No one is.”

Archivist. It’s Jon. No, no, no, no. He was supposed to forget Martin. He was supposed to go away. It can’t be real.

The wind grows louder, or maybe the voice grows quieter. The tension goes out of Martin’s jaw. 

That’s it. It’s not real. 

He doesn’t have time to collect himself before the voice, whatever it is, sounds behind him again. 

“Martin?” 

It’s softer this time, but he still squeezes his eyes shut. He just wants to rest. 

“Jon?” Martin says.

“I— I’m here. I came for you.” Jon’s voice is desperate, almost pleading.

No way. This isn’t real either. But a part of Martin wants it to be. 

“Why?” he manages.

“I thought you might be lost.”

Don’t do this. Don’t be kind to me, Martin wants to say.

“Are you real?” He still can’t look at Jon. He can’t turn around. 

“Yes! I– I– I am.” Jon says. Martin feels a hand on his shoulder. It’s too warm, too solid. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here.”

“No,” Martin says, pulling away as gently as he can. “No, I don’t think so.” This is so much harder than it needs to be. He’s making it harder on himself, and he knows it.

“Why?” Jon sounds as if he’s been slapped.

“This is where I should be,” Martin says, and it feels as close to honesty as anything he’s ever said. “It feels right.” Maybe, just maybe, he can pretend long enough that Jon will leave on his own. Then Martin won’t have to watch him fight this.

“Martin,” Jon says, “Don’t say that.”

Martin tries to block out the way Jon says his name, forces himself not to listen. “Nothing hurts here. It’s just quiet. Even the fear is gentle here.”

“This isn’t right! This isn’t you!” 

Jon is so, so worried. He shouldn’t be. “It is, though.” Martin isn’t worth worrying about. He has to make sure Jon understands that. He laughs, putting as much cold cruelty behind it as he can muster. “I really loved you, you know.”

He can’t take it anymore. He wraps the fog around himself like a blanket, and Jon is gone. 

Finally, he can get some rest.

Chapter Text

This can’t happen, not to Martin. Not on Jon’s watch. 

“I tried to tell you,” says a voice from behind him, and next to him, and nowhere. “He’s gone. He made his choice, and it wasn’t you.”

It’s as if there’s no sand under Jon’s feet anymore. He’s plummeting to the centre of the earth. “It was for me, though,” he says without thinking. “I’m the reason he… I did this to him as much as you.” 

It’s true. He really should have known the effect was having when Martin snapped at him over a shirt. But he was too enveloped in his own issues, and whatever was going on with Magnus that he hadn’t given it much thought.

“Yes, I suppose you did,” says the voice. “Where are your friends, Archivist?”

Jon blinks a few times. “What?”

“Tim. Sasha.”

“What about them?”

“When was the last time you spoke to them?”

Damn. The truth is, Jon can’t remember. He’s sure they’re fine. They’re always fine. But he’s making assumptions, and if Martin had made the same assumption about him…

“I don’t know.”

“And Martin,” prompts the voice. 

“He’s gone,” they say at the same time.

“Because. Of. You,” continues the voice.

Jon tastes blood and syrah. 

“You’re alone, Archivist,” says the voice. “I did warn you. I did want you to leave, but… perhaps it would be better if you stayed a while. After all – you can’t hurt anyone in here.”

“Yes,” Jon says. His own voice echoes back to him. Without thinking, he twists the ring on his finger. 

“Or,” he says, “Perhaps you could answer some questions.” He Knows Peter’s game. He recognizes it, the same way he recognized Saffron a few hours ago. The same way he recognized Misty Shores, despite it not having been there minutes before he crossed the threshold. And he recognizes Peter Lukas, standing just out of his line of sight, as if he’s known the man his whole life.

“What?”

Jon feels a grin cross his face. Peter Lukas turns as if to leave, but Jon looks him directly in the eyes. 

“I wouldn’t try to leave if I were you. I can See you now. I can find you wherever you go.” And Jon knows it to be true as he says it.

The fog around Peter Lukas dissipates. “Fine! It was just a thought. So leave.”

“Not before I get some answers.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

As surely as Peter Lukas says that, Jon knows he’s won. In a voice that is only halfway his own, he says, “ Tell me your story, Peter Lukas. ”

Peter staggers back as if he’s been stabbed. “No,” he says. 

Jon steps toward him. “ Tell me. ”

The man’s head looks like it might explode. Jon can tell he’s fighting it, and it won’t do him any good. 

“Fine!” says Peter Lukas at last. “Fine. Where do you want to begin?”

And Jon hangs on his every word. Peter Lukas tells him his life story, beginning with his religious upbringing and all the way through Gertrude foiling his plans to make his god manifest in London. Jon almost has to laugh at that part. The newspaper. It’s perfect. Then he continues:

“It really knocked me back. Took me years to find myself again. I returned to the Tundra, tried to forget – but the trouble was, I’d tasted the game now. I was still hungry for more. I suppose that’s why I was so keen when Elias contacted me.”

Elias? That knocks Jon nearly out of his high.

“We’d kept in touch, of course: my family helped fund the Institute, and he’d always been good about tipping me off to potential victims. Going through something horrific can leave you feeling very isolated indeed, especially if you know no one else will believe you.And of course… he knew I find it hard to resist a wager.”

Magnus knows this man? Surely not. Peter’s screwing with him. 

“If I could convince one of his staff to willingly pledge themselves to the Lonely, it was all mine. He even let me pick the victim. He was so sure the price of the Institute, the Panopticon and a willing vessel to use it would be just too much for me to resist. And… he was right. Just didn’t go quite as I’d hoped.”

Jon feels sick. The ring weighs a tonne now. Peter has got to be screwing with him. He has to be. This makes no sense. He couldn’t have set Martin up for this; that would be heinous.

“You know, this is one of the first bets I ever made with him I’ve actually lost. But I guess that’s how hustlers work, isn’t it? They lose and lose until you’re willing to put it all on the line, and then – the trap shuts. So I suppose that’s probably why I reacted so rashly, trying to rip his victory away. Keep you here. But it looks like I might have underestimated my opponent once again.”

Despite himself, in his own voice, Jon interrupts. “What was his prize?” He tries vainly to swallow the lump in his throat. “What did he get if you lost?” He has to know.

“Oh, he got you,” replies Peter Lukas.

“I- I don’t understand.” That feeling of power, all his confidence, has left Jon’s body. The space it left in his chest is flooding with desperation.

“And you won’t,” Peter Lukas says, smiling. “Not from me. I’m done.”

Jon pulls at whatever is left of his confidence, digging his fingernails into his palms. “ Tell me. ”

“No,” Peter Lukas says. The fog thickens. 

“Answer my question!” Jon shouts. It’s just him. Whatever was backing him up, it’s gone.

“No,” says a voice from behind him, and next to him, and nowhere. “Leave. Me. Alone!”

“ TELL ME! ” Jon tries one last time.

There is no response.

“Stubborn fool,” he mutters. He’s not totally sure which one of them he’s talking about. “Martin,” he calls, “he’s gone, Martin.” He pushes his hair back out of his face. “He’s gone.”

“His only wish was to die alone.”

Jon turns, as the fog parts around Martin. He looks worse. Paler.

“ Tough. Now listen to me, Martin. Listen,” he pleads. Someone’s got to.

“Hello, Jon.” Martin replies blankly. 

Jon takes his hand, willing Martin to look at him. “Listen, I know you think you want to be here. I know you think it’s safer, and well- well, maybe it is. But we need you.” The words tumble out of Jon’s mouth without his say-so. “ I need you.”

Martin smiles, his eyebrows creasing with pity. “No you don’t. Not really. Everyone’s alone, but we all survive.”

“I don’t just want to survive!” Jon snaps. 

Martin looks away. “I’m sorry.”

“Martin.” Jon places his other hand on Martin’s cheek and turns his face back to him. “Martin, look at me and tell me what you see.”

“I see…” Martin’s voice trails off. Then he blinks several times, like he’s just stepped barefoot in the snow without realizing. “I see you, Jon.” He starts to laugh. His eyes well up with tears. “I see you.”

The fist in Jon’s ribcage unclenches. “Martin.”

Martin’s breath hitches. “I… I was on my own. I was all on my own.” His broad shoulders start to shake, and Jon pulls him into his arms. 

“Not anymore.” Jon blinks away his own tears. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

“How?”

Jon squeezes his hand. “Don’t worry. I know the way.”

Chapter Text

As they exit the alley where Misty Shores used to be, the daylight stings Martin’s eyes. A small furry head bumps up against Martin’s shin. 

“Saffron told me you were in trouble,” Jon says. 

Saffron? Martin looks down. Sure enough, making figure-eights around his ankles, is the same golden tabby who left him alone in Archive Storage. 

“Oh my god!” Martin feels a laugh bubble up from his chest, and his eyes begin to water again. He picks up the cat, who starts purring immediately, and kisses it on the forehead. “I told you to leave!”

Saffron meows as if to say, you should have known better. 

Martin holds the cat close. “I’m so sorry.” Saffron licks his face, headbutting his cheek. “I shouldn’t have sent you away.”

Saffron meows again. Martin understands, and places the cat on the pavement. He looks to Jon, whose freckles have started to glow. 

“Do you mind if I do something really quickly?”

Jon nods. “Go ahead.”

Martin smiles, and begins a song he hasn’t sung in years:

“And now, fair maids, I bid adieu.”

And in his mind, Saffron’s voice joins him:

“Lay the bend to the bonny broom ”

“These parting words I leave with you ”

“ And you’ll beguile the lady soon ”

“ May you always constant prove ”

“ Lay the bend to the bonny broom ”

“ Unto the one that you do love .”

Magic, as it always does, listens to their song, curling between them and bringing Saffron’s fur back to the subtle sparkle it had lost. Immediately, and without regard for passers-by, Saffron stretches, and there’s suddenly a very large golden retriever licking his face. 

Miss me? Saffron asks.

“Of course I did!” Martin laughs, through his tears. 

I know. Now, go thank your knight in shining armor.

Jon is looking at Martin like he’s seen the sun for the first time in ages. Martin, without thinking, pulls him into his arms. “Thank you, Jon.”

Jon holds him tight. “What was I meant to do, leave you in there?”

Martin laughs as they both let go. “You could have.”

Jon shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He smiles then, scratching behind Saffron’s ears. “Who else is going to take care of the Archive mascot?”

Saffron wags their tail. D’you hear that? I’m an official mascot!

“Of course,” Martin says to both of them. 

When he tries to start walking, though, Martin’s body catches up to what he’s put it through. His knees nearly buckle, and if Jon wasn’t there to catch him, he’d get a mouthful of pavement. 

The Archivist pulls Martin’s arm around his shoulder. The contact kicks up butterflies in Martin’s chest like he hasn’t felt in ages. This time, he doesn’t ignore them. 

When they make it back to Jon’s place, Martin allows himself to be herded to the sofa while Jon goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on. The weight of Saffron on Martin’s lap brings him back to himself. His familiar says nothing, but it’s a comfortable silence, just like it used to be. 

Jon returns with two steaming mugs, which he holds with the sleeves of his jumper over his hands to protect them. Martin accepts one. A sip warms him from the inside, so quickly that goosebumps spread across both his arms. A moment passes before he speaks. 

“I am sorry, Jon. I know I’ve been—”

Jon sighs. “No, I’m sorry. You weren’t yourself. I should have recognized that.”

“I was such an arse,” Martin protests. 

“I wasn’t better,” Jon says. “I assumed you hated me for the way I acted. It would have been fair,” he laughs. Martin isn’t sure why, but Jon’s ears are bright red. He’s not meeting Martin’s eyes. 

“No,” Martin says. “You were just— you were having a really hard time. You needed someone you could count on, and that just wasn’t me.”

Jon laughs. It’s a little hollow. “You saved my life. I can’t imagine anyone I should have counted on more.” 

He’s speaking quietly, far too quietly.

“Are you alright?” Martin asks. 

Jon shakes his head, tucking a loose grey strand behind his ear. “I’m fine. I was just worried about you, that’s all.” He still won’t meet Martin’s gaze. 

“You can tell me if something’s wrong, Jon. I’m okay, really.”

Jon’s freckles, which were dimming, have fully gone dark.  He sets his cup down on the table. 

That’s when Martin spots it. 

The ring isn’t big or gaudy. The gem at its center is so small and the band is so fine that Martin wouldn’t have noticed it, if not for Jon’s fiddling with it. It raises the hair on the back of his neck. It looks like… an eye. Is it looking back at him?

“Jon.”

Jon still won’t look at him. “Martin.”

“What is that?”

“Mag– Elias gave it to me.”

“You’re wearing it like–”

“Like an engagement ring.” Jon’s voice is barely above a whisper. “I know.”

“But you’re not– wait. Elias? ”

Jon closes his eyes for a moment and nods. Martin’s throat turns to solid iron and falls into his stomach. 

“A lot happened, Martin. I was worried about you, and Magnus… Elias, he– it started with inviting me to dinner, and then we were kissing, and I had hoped… if we…  I could really understand where I came from.”

“Magnus?” The whole room feels off-kilter, like they’re suddenly at sea. But Martin has heard that name before. 

“That’s his real name. The one he uses in Avalon. Martin–”

“Oh, gods.” The room finally stops swaying. It isn’t for the better. Martin has to stand and turn away to stop himself from shouting at Jon. He braces himself on the bookshelf. “Do you have any idea what you’ve got yourself into?”

“What do you mean?”

Saffron has padded over to Martin, and starts making circles around his legs. 

“He told you his name was Magnus. You’re sure that's what it was?”

“I am. What–”

“Every witch knows that name. When we summon our familiars, we get warned about him. Whatever he’s told you, he won’t be helping you get to Avalon.”

“Why not?”

Martin turns to look at Jon again. “Because he’s been banished from there for three hundred years.”

Jon goes pale. “You’re certain– what– why? ”

Martin pinches the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. The Fae don’t talk about it. But he can’t go back, and I’ve heard– I’ve heard their Queen keeps an eye on him anyways. Just in case.”

Jon picks up his mug, then sets it back down. “I– I didn’t….” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. His shoulders seem to collapse in on him. “Oh, gods.”

As if through someone else’s eyes, Martin watches himself come back to Jon’s side. He puts an arm around his shoulders. He looks to Saffron, but even they seem lost. 

“I didn’t even want to be with him,” Jon says. His breath hitches. “But you were– and he made me feel– oh, gods. Martin, what do I do?”

He’s panicking. Truthfully, Martin has no idea how to answer his question, but he doesn’t tell Jon that. Instead, he pulls Jon into his arms and kisses him.

Chapter Text

Martin’s lips are so soft, Jon worries his own chapped ones will scratch him. His face grows warm as Martin holds him closer, and closer still. He reaches up to put his arms around Martin. His ring is cold on his hand. He takes it off, and it’s as if his whole body has been set on fire.

How could he ever think Martin hated him?

His stomach twists. It’s something like guilt, at first, then anxiety. There’s somewhere he’s supposed to be, and he’s missing it. He breaks away from Martin, whose brow furrows. 

Then, there’s pain.

It shoots up his spine and explodes in his head, like a signal flare. His ears are ringing. Someone cries out, and it’s not until Jon has fallen to the ground that he realizes it’s him. Something pulls him, as if by the hair, but his eyes are shut. He’s got no idea where he’s going. 

His hand closes around the ring. He wants to put it down, but his hand won’t let go of it.

Martin’s hands are on him, trying to help him to his feet. Jon’s being shepherded, but he’s not sure where. He feels himself shrug off Martin’s touch, even as tears start to burn behind his eyes and he wants nothing more than to stay. 

Jon has to go. 

He stumbles out the door and into the street. Invisible ropes hoist him up at the shoulders. Martin’s footsteps sound in the hallway, but Jon can’t even look back at him. His head won’t turn. His neck won’t move. It’s not until he’s made it out onto the street that he realizes what’s happening, where he’s going. 

He’s heading for the Institute.

When he arrives, his feet carry him to Magnus’s office. Martin had tried to follow him, but whatever was hurting Jon had also led him down so many winding streets at such a pace that the witch must have gotten lost. He’s opened his eyes once or twice, but the pain and terror was so intense that he couldn’t keep them that way for long. The narrow band where the ring covered his finger at some point is the only place that doesn’t burn like iron. He’s sure people were concerned by him, running through the Institute with his eyes screwed shut like a madman, but he can’t muster enough sense to care. 

His hand reaches for the doorknob without his say-so. He hears Magnus say something, feels cool hands on his face, before all his senses give out on him. 

He wakes, a few moments later, with his head in Magnus’s lap. The Fae’s elegant hands run through his hair, as if combing away the burning feeling from underneath his scalp.

“Jon,” Magnus says. His tone is almost gentle. 

“Mag–” Jon’s throat feels like sandpaper.

“Hush, now. You’re alright. You’ve come back to me.”

Jon’s heart kicks at his sternum. Magnus helps him sit upright against the desk and hands him a glass of water, one so delicate Jon dully worries he might break it. It doesn’t occur to him to wonder where it came from.

Magnus places a kiss on Jon’s forehead. It burns like a brand at first, then the remains of the pain he’d felt pass through Jon’s lungs and out with his next breath. 

“Tell me what happened,” Magnus says. 

Jon’s mouth opens before he can think. “I found Martin in– in the Lonely. I took him back to my flat.” He clenches his jaw. There’s a coil of cold fear in his stomach. He can’t reveal anything else.

“But that’s not all, is it?” Magnus says coolly. He goes to stroke Jon’s hair again, lacing his fingers through it. Then, he tugs. “Tell me everything. ”

Jon’s jaw feels as if it’s pried open. The words come out like vomit. “We talked. He– he kissed me. I took off the ring.” No. No. No. Stop.

Magnus lets go of Jon’s hair, trailing a finger down the side of his face. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”

“You knew?” Jon asks, finally regaining control of himself. 

“Of course I knew. I had hoped you were rather more loyal than that, but once Peter told me what you did, I figured it wouldn’t be long before something like this forced my hand.”

Everything clicks into horrible clarity. “You– you wanted Martin out of your way.”

“It worked like a charm, at first. You even came to me. That, I hadn’t predicted, but it was… pleasing. Of course, I could have been more brutal about it. I had Martin’s name, and yours. I could have compelled him to jump off the roof of the Institute, compelled you to marry me. But I’m not a monster, Jon.”

“Could have fooled me,” Jon spits. 

Magnus puts his hand around Jon’s throat. He’s not squeezing, not yet. “Now, let’s have none of that.”

Jon’s mouth goes numb. 

“I really do care for you,” Magnus says. “Pitiful creature that you are, cut off from your kin. That’s why I wanted you in the first place. Stay there a moment.”

Magnus stands and goes behind the desk to retrieve something. Jon tries to move, but his body won’t respond. He tries to speak, and all that comes out is a moan. When Magnus returns, it’s with two items. The first is wrapped in silk, deep green. The second is a bowl, with a golden powder. 

“You’re going to help me, Jon. We’re going to break into Avalon, together. And then, when I’ve conquered it and you’ve… recovered–” Magnus kneels next to Jon, then goes to straddle him– “We can both have anything we want.” He sets down the silk parcel, and begins to draw something on Jon’s face in that golden powder. Jon feels tension in his neck returning, and tries to turn his head away, but Magnus catches him by the chin. His eyes are like ice, looking directly into Jon’s.

“I don’t want to hurt you before I have to. This is going to take a lot out of both of us. Do cooperate, pet.”

Jon’s heart turns to lead. I don’t have a choice, do I?

Chapter Text

Martin loses track of Jon too quickly. Still, he has a hunch about where he’s headed. He curses Magnus for doing this to Jon— and he curses himself. Every witch, fae and goblin in Britain knows about Magnus— Magnus the Traitor, Magnus the Two-faced, Magnus the Deceiver. He was the monster under all their beds, the one fae to ever trick Titania herself— and Elias, the whole time. And when Martin saw the bloody Magnus Institute was hiring, what had he done? He’d had a little chuckle and sent in his CV. It’d be funny, he’d thought. But no one’s laughing now. 

He sprints through the streets of London, bobbing and weaving through pedestrians. A distant part of him wonders if the streets were this crowded earlier. Saffron’s airborne now, a gilded falcon streaking through the sky ahead of him. 

“What the Hell was that?” he asks Saffron. His throat is so dry, he can barely get the words out. 

His curse, says Saffron. It felt the same.

“Why would it manifest now? I thought we took care of it!” 

We did. For a bit, anyway. But if Magnus has anything to do with it—

“We’ve got to get him out of there.” The pavement is unforgiving. He should have worn better shoes; there’s no way he’ll catch up to Jon like this. 

Saffron’s voice rings in his head: You’re a witch, aren’t you? You can run as fast as you please.

A fog clears in Martin’s mind. Of course. He’d been so busy trying to catch Jon, he’d forgotten there was an easier way to do things. 

He stops, centres himself on the pavement. He remembers Jon’s lips on his, the warmth of his hand in the cold fog of the Lonely. 

“ When shall we meet again, sweetheart,

When shall we meet again?

When the oaken leaves that fall from the trees

Are green and spring up again.”

For a dreadful moment, no magic stirs. He takes a breath to try again.

Then, his feet begin to float ever so slightly above the ground. He feels his gaze pulled toward the Institute. He stands a chance now.  

Not bad! Saffron says. 

“I’m coming, Jon,” Martin murmurs. The beginnings of a plan take their shape in his mind. 

These damn tunnels nearly make Martin heave. He darts past worm corpses, dead fire extinguishers, and what he’s fairly certain is an empty energy drink can. His lungs are filling with dust like the bottom of an hourglass. Saffron is ahead of him, now turned into a mouse. It’s a maze down here. Even with the spell he’s cast, taking the right corridor in the right place will be tricky. 

Something’s wrong, says Saffron. 

“We can’t stop,” Martin says. “There’s no time.”

There’s no time to screw this up either, Saffron responds. 

As they speak, a voice echoes in the tunnel to their left. It’s distant, and it’s in the wrong direction, but—

“Jon?” Martin calls. He careens to the left, even as Saffron’s protests echo in his mind. His concentration is slipping. The pull he felt from his spell is weaker, but he hears Jon . 

It’s a dead end. 

“He’s enchanted the tunnels.”

That’s what I was trying to tell you. When Martin turns, Saffron is sitting on their haunches, wriggling their nose expectantly. Come on. There’s no time to waste.

  The voices continue, but now Martin knows not to listen. Soon, they turn to screams, tearing their way through the air and piercing Martin’s heart, and still, he focuses on his spell. 

“When shall we meet again, sweetheart?” 

There’s a staircase. Jon is calling his name— is it ten feet back? Twenty? He turns his head and the direction changes. Is it ahead of him now?

“When shall we meet again?”

One foot in front of the other. It isn’t real. It isn’t real. 

“When the oaken leaves that fall from the trees…”

We’re nearly there, says Saffron. He’s trying harder to throw us off. At the bottom of the staircase, there is only one passage forward. 

“Are green and spring up again.”

The tunnel opens up, and Martin’s head starts to spin. What he’s looking at isn’t possible: the cavern, many times larger than the Institute itself, opens hundreds of feet above him. The walls are honeycombed with smaller chambers, mostly empty. Mostly. There’s a stalagmite at the centre— no, not a stalagmite. A tower. And at the top of it, a light. 

The stairs are too easy. Nothing twists or turns. No sounds echo around him. 

I think he’s expecting us, Saffron says. They continue up the stairs in silence. 

When they reach the top, there is no door to open. 

Saffron takes one last look at Martin. Are you sure?

He nods. They skitter away, leaving him alone. 

He passes through an archway, leading into a chamber that’s lit up in livid green. Magnus leans against the pillar in the centre, looking at his watch. And there, standing stock-still, covered in strange golden sigils—

“Jon!” Martin’s voice breaks. He can’t help it. It’s all he can do not to run over there and check him for injuries. He expects Jon will look relieved. 

Instead, tears fill his eyes. “Martin,” Jon says. “You shouldn’t have come.”

He can’t mean it. Not really. Still, it hits him harder than a hex ever could.

“On the contrary,” Magnus says cheerfully. “Though, you are rather late. I’d say this habit of absenteeism was going to be a problem, but under the circumstances—”

“Let him go.” Martin’s blood simmers. 

Magnus breathes in through his teeth. “I’m afraid I can’t. You see, my beloved and I have places to be. Don’t we, Jon?”

Jon says nothing. His eyes flick desperately between Martin and Magnus, Magnus and Martin. 

“He’s nervous. It’s only natural. He is a rather important part of this whole thing.”

“How?” Martin asks through gritted teeth. He’d love nothing more than to tear him apart— but he can’t. Not yet. 

“It’s simple, really.” Magnus begins to pace a circle around Jon, like a hawk. “I can’t pass through any of the current gates to Avalon without Titania knowing. Her eyes are on every one of them. But Jon here—” Magnus caresses Jon’s face, and the Archivist shudders. “More accurately, his blood, presents a solution to that problem. Do you know how to make a gate to another place?”

Martin clenches his fist. “You need something with magic from both places.”

“A purpose to which a half-fae is perfectly suited.”

“Then why haven’t you done it already?”

“This… curse of his. It’s old. Almost as old as me. Since I have his name, I can steer it, but I must admit I lack the power on my own to unmake it.”

“That’s why you let me in.” Martin’s beginning to sweat. Saffron should be back. 

“Now you’re getting it, witch. I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to lure you here— Peter was supposed to keep you occupied until it was time. But I have your name, and quite a bit of your fear to start the process. That little spell you sang was just what I needed.

Speaking of which… Jon.” The name reverberates in Martin’s skull. “That’s your cue.”

Jon trembles. Martin nearly takes a step forward as if to catch him, but he can’t. His feet won’t move. And Jon begins to speak.

“You who watch, and know, and understand none.”

The golden sigils begin to glow. Magnus draws a knife. 

“You who listen, and hear, and will not comprehend.” Jon allows Magnus to take his hand. He’s looking at Martin, pleading. Magnus slices Jon’s palm. The blood falls to the floor, which might as well have fallen out from under Martin’s feet. 

And then a bit of thread falls from nowhere right in front of his nose.

I came as soon as I could, says Saffron. Magnus notices the mouse and laughs. 

“You do as you please with your familiar, witch. It won’t help you now.”

The paralysis breaks. “What do I do?” he asks Saffron.

“You who wait, and wait, and drink in all that is not yours by right.” Tears are streaming down Jon’s face. His voice is breaking. Martin has to make it stop.

Bind him. That’s all she said. 

Bind him. 

Bind him. 

Bind him.  

Chapter Text

There’s no doubt that Martin Blackwood loves his husband. He could have gone to Avalon, done whatever he pleased, lived however he liked. Such is the reward for those who bring Titania’s enemies to heel. But Martin only asked one thing: that Ariel’s curse on Jon’s family be brought to an end.

They live in a cottage now, in the Highlands of Scotland. The wedding came later, once the nightmares ended and the curtains could be left open again. At Jon’s request, there were no rings— the ceremony consisted of a shared cup of tea and an agreement that, come what may, they would face it together. 

The people in town don’t understand them, but their children know where to go when they’re lost— and it isn’t to the police. They seek out that little place where lilacs fill the window-boxes and bergamot oranges grow in the greenhouse. They know the people there can bring anyone home. 

If you catch them at a good time, they might tell you the story. Martin will make you a cup of tea. Jon will let the young ones touch the scar on his hand. Books will float through the air— be sure to watch your head— and Jon’s freckles cast a pale green light over all of it. Not all their wounds have healed, of course; they keep to themselves, keep out of magical business. Jon doesn’t drink wine anymore. Martin still tenses up around knives. They watch spiders in the garden carefully.

But there is no iron on the windows anymore, and none in the house. There is no need for it. There is only the vicious guard cat, Saffron, who is just a little too smart for their own good. 

Just like that, Jonathan Sims got a second chance at being loved. 

This time, it worked.